Israelis Brief Top U.S. Official on Iran

STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/world/middleeast/11mullen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


JERUSALEM — Adm. Mike Mullen , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made an unusual visit to Israel and got a polite earful on Monday about Israel's gloomy assessment of Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Israel thinks that an American intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons program, published in an unclassified version last week, is unduly optimistic and focuses too narrowly on the last stage of weapons development — fashioning a bomb from highly enriched uranium.

The National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus of 16 American spy agencies, says with "high confidence" that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and with "moderate confidence" that the program had not resumed.

Israeli intelligence estimates say Iran stopped all its nuclear weapons activities for a time in 2003, nervous after the American invasion of Iraq, but then resumed those activities in 2005, accelerating enrichment and ballistic missile development and constructing a 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor in Arak that could produce plutonium.

Israel believes Iran continues to work, however limited by international pressure and economic and technical difficulties, on all phases of building a nuclear weapon. Iran denies ever having had a nuclear weapons program and says its nuclear program is focused on generating electricity.

In meetings on Monday with the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, and Israeli intelligence officials, Admiral Mullen and his staff listened to concerns that Iran could produce a nuclear bomb, unless deterred, by the end of 2009 at the earliest or, more likely, sometime in 2010-11.

The Pentagon, focused on Iraq, is eager for a diplomatic solution with Iran. But the Pentagon has also emphasized that the intelligence estimate "made it clear that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program and that they are still enriching uranium, " said Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for the admiral.

Captain Kirby called Monday's discussions "productive and candid," and said they centered on regional challenges "and the shared recognition that there remains a potential for Iran to develop nuclear weapons and threaten its neighbors."

Admiral Mullen, who has been chairman of the Joint Chiefs for only a few months, was making a 24-hour visit to Israel, rare despite close defense ties between the United States and Israel.

He was returning from a regional security conference in Bahrain, where the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, emphasized that Washington continued to see Iran as a grave threat to regional security. Mr. Gates said Iran had accelerated its efforts to enrich uranium despite United Nations Security Council sanctions and could restart a weapons program at any time.

Admiral Mullen was a guest of the Israeli chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who held a dinner for him Sunday night.

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