Israel will only strike Iranian nuclear facilities in September or after the United States presidential elections in November, a White House official told the British Sunday Times newspaper after a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama last week.

According to the report, Obama has taken Israel's warnings about a possible strike in Iran very seriously. The Washington source added that the president “might visit in the summer to reassure the Israelis that the US commitment to defend Israel is unshakable and thus thwart a possible autumn attack.”

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Obama insisted that any attack on Iran should be postponed until after the US presidential elections in November, possibly even until next spring. The source revealed that Netanyahu consented to delaying a strike, but wished to know until when. “The question is how much time,” he reportedly said.





Netanyahu (L) and Obama (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO)

The White House source added that Netanyahu presented a number of demands Iran must fulfill in order to avoid an Israeli attack, including transferring 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of enriched uranium to a third party, stopping the enrichment process at the Fordow site near Qom and ceasing any further enrichment beyond the 3.5% required for power generation.

The source reported that Israel's National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror presented US administration and military officials with new intelligence data about Iran's nuclear program. The findings included "Project 111," a project to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead and conduct large-scale high-explosive experiments, the Sunday Times reported. Amidror also noted that a Russian expert in Tehran had been involved for the past six years in helping develop Iran's nuclear program.

Israel rejected US claims that any official order from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to develop a nuclear bomb would soon reach them.

In the meeting, one Israel official told the Americans: “We’ll not know beforehand about such an order, you’ll not know, and probably Allah himself will not know. The time we’ll know for sure is when we wake up to a nuclear test.”

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