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US Defense Secretary: â€œIsrael can strike Iran on April-Juneâ€

03 February 2012 10:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the date of Israelâ€™s strike to Iran, APA reports. Pentagon considers that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June. â€œThe Washington Postâ€ newspaperâ€™s opinion writer David Ignatius, who is accompanying Panetta in his Brussels visit, writes that Panetta highly assessed the likelihood of Israelâ€™s strike to Iran: â€œThe Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon â€” and only the United States could then stop them militarily. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesnâ€™t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasnâ€™t done yetâ€.

Ignatius writes that President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold. â€œBut the White House hasnâ€™t yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack. The Obama administration is conducting intense discussions about what an Israeli attack would mean for the United States: whether Iran would target U.S. ships in the region or try to close the Strait of Hormuz; and what effect the conflict and a likely spike in oil prices would have on the fragile global economyâ€.