US won’t relent until Iran is thwarted, US envoy to Israel says

The United States will increase pressure on Tehran “and will not relent until it achieves its goal: preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” American Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said Wednesday.

Speaking at a security conference at Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies, Shapiro added that negotiations with Iran “are not talks for the sake of talking.”

“The clock is ticking and the window of opportunity is closing,” he said, emphasizing that Washington is working in complete coordination with Israel on the issue.

Shapiro’s comments came against a background of Israeli frustration at the inconclusive, protracted negotiating sessions between Iran and the P5+1 countries. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sniped that Iran has got “a freebie” from the West, in that it is dragging out the talks while it quietly moves ahead toward its nuclear weapons goal. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier Wednesday that Iran is undeterred in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and that Israel was “not deluded by the talks.” At the weekend, a US official was widely quoted, anonymously, in the Hebrew media as saying that Israel believes it is already “too late” for sanctions to stop Iran.

Speaking two weeks ago, Shapiro said the United States has completed its planning for a military strike on Iran. At a closed conference in Tel Aviv, he said, “It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically, and through the use of pressure, than to use military force. But that does not mean that option isn’t available. Not just available, it’s ready. The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready.”