Israel could strike Iran as soon as September

By Nina Mandell / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Military action on Iran may happen sooner than later, unnamed American officials reportedly said this week.

The Obama administration officials told The Guardian newspaper it’s likely that sanctions in Iran will fail, and Israel or the United States and Europe may attack by as early as September.

“The White House wants to see sanctions work. This is not the Bush White House. It does not need another conflict,” an official knowledgeable on Middle East policy told the London newspaper. “(Iran’s) problem is that the guys in Tehran are behaving like sanctions don’t matter, like their economy isn’t collapsing, like Israel isn’t going to do anything.”

While officials told the newspaper the Obama administration would prefer to delay any military actions until after the November elections, other officials told the newspaper they believe the “sweet spot” — or where a variety of diplomatic, policy and practical timetables come together — for attack is in September or October.

American officials told the newspaper that if Israel did attack Iran, the United States would undoubtedly be perceived to be in cahoots with its Middle East ally — even though the Obama administration has preached patience privately and publicly to the Israelis.

The news comes as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed this week that Iran loaded its first domestically made fuel rod into a nuclear reactor and threatened to cut of oil supplies to six European countries.

Israel has cautioned that if it waits too long to attack Iran, the strike won’t be effective because Iran is building much of its nuclear weapons underground.

“It’s not that the Israelis believe the Iranians are on the brink of a bomb. It’s that the Israelis may fear that the Iranian program is on the brink of becoming out of reach of an Israeli military strike, which means it creates a ‘now-or-never’ moment,” Colin Kahl, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, told the newspaper.

On Tuesday, defense secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he does not think Israel had made a decision to launch a military strike at Iran.

“We have common cause with Israel,” he said. “We have common cause with the international community with regards to the concerns about Iran. We’ve made very clear that they are not to develop a nuclear weapon. We’ve made very clear that they are not to close the Straits of Hormuz. We’ve also made very clear that they are not to export terrorism and try to undermine other governments.”