US-Israel confrontation on Iran behind welcoming ceremonial

(DEBKAfile) - Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert this week shot off a strong secret note to US President George W. Bush, DEBKAfile�s sources reveal, protesting the administration�s strategic steps toward rapprochement with Iran.

Israel was not forewarned, Olmert wrote bitterly, although these steps directly violated US-Israel understandings on Iran of the past year. Bush, he said, had broken the promises he gave in face-to-face meetings with the prime minister earlier this year. If nothing is done to arrest Iran�s progress towards a nuclear bomb, Olmert warned, Iran will have all the components ready for assembly by early 2009, that is, in 6-8 months.

This time line is tighter than the one the prime minister gave the Democratic Senator Barack Obama when he visited Jerusalem Wednesday, July 23.

DEBKAfile�s Washington sources add that Bush has not replied to the letter, although the prime minister wrote in a spirit of extreme alarm over the threat to Israel�s security and indeed survival building up in Tehran.

The US response apparently came in the way American military chiefs brushed off Israeli chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, when he presented intelligence updates on the state of Iran�s military nuclear program. He was received with great honor during his week�s working visit, but his hosts declined to address the working theories guiding the IDF with regard to that program.

Res. Maj-Gen Yizhak Ben-Israel, former head of IDF Weapons Authority, strongly refuted Saturday, July 26, the estimate published by Time Magazine quoting former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevi (up until 2002) as speaking out against an Israeli attack on Iran, because it �could have an impact on us [Israel] for the next 100 years.�

Ben-Israel, a world-class expert on Iran�s nuclear and missile programs, countered that Israel�s failure to attack Iran�s nuclear sites would �jeopardize its security.� Time is working against the Jewish state,� he said.

As he spoke, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his country�s nuclear program had managed to double the uranium-enriching centrifuges operating in Natanz to 6,000.

(link to source)