President Obama and his senior advisers have said little publicly about Iran since the resumption of negotiations over its nuclear in April, preferring to let the diplomats hash out the issues in the hope that tensions with Tehran can be managed, at least until the election in November.
In Israel, however, the United States is still saying plenty, with a stream of current and former officials traveling there to threaten additional sanctions on Iran and to reiterate Mr. Obama’s readiness to use military action against Iran if diplomacy fails.
“When the president said all options are on the table, let me reassure you that those options are real and viable,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense, speaking at a security conference in Tel Aviv last week. Referring to the Pentagon’s planning for a possible military strike, she said, “Having sat in the Pentagon and spent a lot of my time on this issue, I can assure you of the quality of that work.”
David S. Cohen, a Treasury Department under secretary who oversees financial sanctions, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that if the next round of nuclear talks, in Moscow on June 18, break down, “there is no question we will continue to ratchet up the pressure.” Israel and the United States, he said, are considering unspecified new measures that would build on the oil sanctions set to take effect at the beginning of next month.
And their remarks followed a speech last month by the American ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, who said that the United States not only was willing to use force, but had also made preparations for a military operation.
The White House says it has not coordinated a message campaign in Israel; Ms. Flournoy, who stepped down earlier this year as chief policy adviser to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, said she did not discuss her remarks in advance with either the Pentagon or the White House. But her statements dovetail with a concerted American effort that also includes frequent high-level meetings with Israeli officials — all aimed at giving Israel enough confidence in the diplomatic effort that it will hold off on a unilateral military strike.
“There is, and has been, a consistent interest in reassuring the Israelis that we’re not going to be played,” said Dennis B. Ross, who was one of the president’s senior advisers on Iran and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That the goal is to raise pressure, not to relieve it, and that the objective remains prevention, not containment.”
Mr. Ross did his part for the effort at a public gathering in New York City last week, in which he recounted a meeting he had with King Abdullah II of Saudi Arabia in April 2009 when Mr. Ross was still in the administration. The king, he said, warned him explicitly that Saudi Arabia would press for its own nuclear bomb if Iran acquired nuclear weapons. Though Saudi Arabia’s alarm about Iran was well known through leaked State Department cables, it was the first time a former Obama official had publicly confirmed the king’s threat.
Mr. Ross’s remarks flew largely under the radar in the United States. But they were published prominently in Israel, where he is a well-known figure after decades as a negotiator on Middle East peace issues. By underscoring the danger of a nuclear arms race in the region — something Mr. Obama himself has emphasized in speeches and interviews — Mr. Ross was trying to reassure Israelis, some of whom harbor lingering suspicions that the White House would rather contain a nuclear Iran than go to war to prevent it.
Israeli jitters have hardly been eased by the first two bargaining sessions between Iran and the major powers, which in addition to the United States include Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The second meeting, in Baghdad last month, ended badly amid signs that the Iranians were unwilling to suspend enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity — a demand by the major powers that was intended to build confidence for a broader deal.
For some Israelis, the latest signs of an impasse vindicate their worries that Iran will use the negotiations as a way to stall the West, delay the oil sanctions and buy itself time to stockpile more enriched uranium. In an interview published Wednesday in the German newspaper Bild, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained that the major powers were making “inadequate” demands of Iran at the bargaining table.
Israeli officials also balked when the senior American nuclear negotiator, Wendy R. Sherman, an under secretary of state for political affairs, declared on a visit to Israel after the Baghdad meeting that the United States and Israel were on the same page when it came to dealing with Iran. “We believe that the Iranian goal is to drag this out as long as possible,” said an Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
“We’re happy to hear what they have to say,” this official said of the visiting Americans. “We’re happy to try to be reassured.”
Ms. Flournoy, who now advises the Obama campaign, devoted most of her remarks in Tel Aviv to making the case that Israel should not launch a premature or unilateral strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such an attack, she said, would set back the Iranian nuclear program, at most, one to three years. And it could splinter the coalition the United States has assembled to impose crippling sanctions on Tehran.
“Here’s the rub,” Ms. Flournoy said at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “If Israel or any other country were to launch a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear program prematurely, before all other options to stop Iran have been tried and failed, it would undermine the legitimacy of the action.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Flournoy said she was encouraged because several Israelis approached her at the conference to express opposition to an Israeli strike and skepticism of the government’s assertions that the window was fast closing for a military attack that would incapacitate Iran’s nuclear abilities.
But she added that the diversity of opinion among ordinary Israelis did not ease her fears of military action since, she said, Mr. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak “are getting clearer and clearer in their intentions.”
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