Sharon Asks U.S. to Pressure Iran to Give Up Its Nuclear Program

David E. Sanger, The New York Times:

Spreading photographs of Iranian nuclear sites over a lunch table at the Bush ranch in Texas on Monday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel urged President Bush to step up pressure on Iran to give up all elements of its nuclear program, according to senior American and Israeli officials.

Mr. Sharon said Israeli intelligence showed Iran was near "a point of no return" in learning how to develop a weapon, the officials said. READ MORE

However, Mr. Sharon gave no indication that Israel was preparing to act alone to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, a prospect that Vice President Dick Cheney, who was at the lunch, raised publicly three months ago.

In a conversation lasting more than an hour, Mr. Sharon argued that European nations negotiating with Iran were softening their position and may be willing to allow it to hold on to technology to enrich uranium.

American officials said the evidence Mr. Sharon presented, including aerial photographs of sites in Iran, was neither startling nor new to Mr. Bush. But they said the prime minister was clearly pressuring Mr. Bush not to allow the European negotiations with Iran to drag on. ...

Nonetheless, Mr. Sharon's extended conversation - bolstered by the Israeli photographs and intelligence presented by his chief military aide, Brig. Gen. Yaakov Galant - showed tension between Israel and its biggest ally over how much time is available to deal with the issue.

While American and Israeli officials insisted Tuesday that they were in total agreement about the nature of the Iranian threat, Israel has interpreted the evidence that the two countries share in what one official called "the worst-case scenario." In describing the Iranians as on the cusp of a "point of no return," officials said, Mr. Sharon was arguing to Mr. Bush that once Iran solves some remaining technical hurdles, there will be no effective way of stopping it from ultimately building a weapon - even if that day is years away.

"This can't be delayed much longer," a senior Israeli official traveling in Mr. Sharon's party said Tuesday. "There is very little time until the point of no return is reached."

American officials have interpreted the evidence differently. While they have accused Iran of running a secret weapons program - under the cover of plans to build nuclear power plants for electricity - they have told Congress that any weapon is likely to be several years away. In the most recent public testimony on the subject, on Feb. 16, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that "unless constrained by a nuclear nonproliferation agreement, Tehran probably will have the ability to produce nuclear weapons early in the next decade."

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in February in the German magazine Der Spiegel that if Iran had "decided to operate a secret nuclear weapons program - for which we, as I mentioned, have not found any evidence to date - they are likely to have a bomb in two to three years. They certainly have the know-how and the industrial infrastructure." ...

The official warned that "what is worrisome is that there are several European countries that are beginning to think that Iran will be a member of the club, and that is a grave danger."

Mr. Sharon, officials said, made it clear to administration officials during his visit that he has little confidence in the outcome of the negotiations under way by Iran and three European nations - Britain, France and Germany. Iran has insisted that it has the right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and will not give up that right. While there is disagreement among the Europeans themselves, they seem more willing to allow some uranium enrichment, under strict monitoring.

The United States has argued that because Iran hid so many elements of its nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency for 17 years, it cannot be trusted.

"If you think that they've been running a secret weapons program, which is what we believe and the Israelis believe, than what kind of inspection system could work?" a senior American diplomat said Tuesday.

The session at the ranch also included some references to Iran's growing missile program, which gives it the ability to reach Israel. Admiral Jacoby, in his February testimony, noted that Iran already has medium-range missiles "capable of reaching Tel Aviv," and he said that by 2015, it may have "the technical capability" to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile. But he noted that "it is not clear whether Iran has decided to field such a missile." ...