Israel Matzav

'It's 1938 and Iran is Germany'

But even politicians who normally take a less extreme view, like Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, Israel's minister of intelligence and atomic energy, are now realizing that the situation is coming to a head. A narrow majority of the Israeli population currently favors bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, while 11 percent would consider leaving Israel if Tehran acquires nuclear weapons.

Meridor says that his counterparts in the US government are reporting a sharp increase in the level of concern among Iran's moderate Arab neighbors. "Ninety percent of the conversations between the United States and countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now revolve around Iran, while 10 percent relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he says.

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Behind the scenes in Vienna, there are grave concerns over news that Iran could be well on its way to developing a Shahab-3 midrange missile that could be upgraded to carry nuclear weapons and could reach Tel Aviv. Iranian scientists are believed to have successfully simulated the detonation of a nuclear warhead. Detonation is one of the most technologically challenging problems in the construction of this type of nuclear weapon. Experts believe that it could take Iran as little as a year to acquire the expertise and a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium to build a real nuclear warhead.

Intelligence reports about a restructuring in the Iranian Defense Ministry are no less alarming. According to those reports, a "Department for Expanded High-Technology Applications" (FEDAT) is now under great pressure from the government in Tehran to push ahead with a military nuclear program. According to an organizational chart of FEDAT that SPIEGEL has obtained, the department is divided into sub-departments for uranium mining, enrichment, metallurgy, neutrons, highly explosive material and fuel supply ("Project 111"). FEDAT is headed by the mysterious Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, one of the key officials the IAEA wants to interview, although Mahabadi has so far refused to talk to the agency.

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According to conservative sources in Tehran, President Ahmadinejad was recently quite willing to make a compromise. He apparently hoped that he could spruce up his reputation, heavily tarnished as a result of the election disaster, at least internationally. This, say the Tehran sources, explains why Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili signaled a willingness to make concessions at the historic nuclear summit in Geneva in early October, a meeting at which an Iranian official came face-to-face with a senior representative of the "Great Satan" for the first time since the Iranian revolution. But in Khamenei's eyes, the deal -- uranium outsourcing in return for fuel delivery -- was a non-starter. Ironically, opposition politician Mousavi agrees with him.

A key reason for the Iranian politicians' self-confidence is that they do not believe that Israel would truly risk an attack on Iran. US experts also warn against the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities. David Albright, head of the Washington think tank ISIS, believes that a "surgical strike" against the nuclear facilities would be completely impossible. According to Albright, no one knows how many nuclear sites Iran has, and the centrifuges in existing facilities like Natanz are apparently installed in tunnels so deep underground that even bunker-busting bombs could not destroy everything.

The Israelis, on the other hand, believe that Iran is merely playing for time. The Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, has long had its capacities directed at Iran, and not just since Netanyahu came into office. Israeli envoys quietly visit European companies that export products to Tehran. When agitated German executives insist that their products are intended purely for civilian purposes, the Israelis produce photos showing the European components installed in one of Iran's nuclear plants.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:34 PM