Citing U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Israel had told Washington that Syria had already began payments for a $900 million purchase of the S-300 and an initial delivery was due within three months.

The S-300 is designed to shoot down planes and missiles at 125-mile (200-km) ranges. It would enhance Syria’s current Russian-supplied defenses, which did not deter Israel from launching devastating air strikes around Damascus last weekend.

“We have raised objections to this (sale) with the Russians, and the Americans have too,” an Israeli official told Reuters.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow or Damascus.

In 2010, Russia backed out of a tentative S-300 sale to Iran that had been in the works for years. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cited U.N. sanctions imposed that year over Iran’s defiance of international demands to curb its nuclear program.

Israel and the United States, which threaten military attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities if diplomatic alternatives fail, had lobbied Moscow to drop the deal with Tehran.

ISRAEL ATTACKS

Israel bombed sites near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday which intelligence sources said held Iranian-supplied missiles destined for Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon. The heavy presence of Israeli warplanes in Lebanese airspace suggested they may have eluded Syrian defenses by launching long-range missiles across the border at the targets.

Assad accused his Israeli foe of attacking Syria in order to support the insurgency there – an allegation denied by Israel, though, like Western powers, it has urged his ouster.

Russia, however, has balked at such calls. It voiced “particular alarm” at Israel’s air strikes, seeing a possible precursor for Western military intervention against Assad.

Robert Hewson, an IHS Jane’s air power analyst, said that were Syria to receive the S-300 it would probably take several months to deploy and operate the system. But he suggested it would not pose a big challenge for Israel’s hi-tech air force.

“It’s a fairly well-established, fairly well-understood system, so there is a corpus of knowledge, particularly among Israel’s friends, about how to deal with this system,” he said.

Once activated, the S-300 could easily be spotted thanks to its distinctive radar signal, Hewson said, “and from there it’s a fairly short step to taking it out. It’s not a wonder-weapon.”

Cyprus bought the S-300 and eventually positioned it on the Greek island of Crete. Israel, which has close ties with Nicosia and Athens, may have tested its jets against that S-300′s capabilities during Mediterranean overflights, Hewson said.

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by Jeffrey Heller)

Oil prices spiked above $105 (67.5 pounds) a barrel, their highest in nearly a month, on Monday as the air strikes on Friday and Sunday prompted fears of a wider spill over of the two-year-old conflict in Syria that could affect Middle East oil exports.

“There are no winds of war,” Yair Golan, the general commanding Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, told reporters while out jogging with troops.

“Do you see tension? There is no tension. Do I look tense to you?” he said, according to the Maariv NRG news website.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under veiled criticism in Beijing, where he began a scheduled visit in an apparent sign of confidence Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not retaliate. China urged restraint without mentioning Israel by name.

Russia, Assad’s other protector on the U.N. Security Council, said the strikes by Israel “caused particular alarm”. President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Tuesday to try to tackle differences over the Syrian crisis.

Israeli officials said the raids were not connected with Syria’s civil war but aimed at stopping Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, acquiring weapons to strike Israeli territory.

Israel aimed to avoid “an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime,” veteran lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Netanyahu, told Israel Radio.

MOST CASUALTIES FROM ELITE UNIT

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group based in Britain, said at least 42 Syrian soldiers were killed in the strikes and 100 were missing.

Other opposition sources put the death toll at 300 soldiers, mostly belonging to the elite Republican Guards, a praetorian unit that forms the last line of defence of Damascus and includes mainly members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has controlled Syria since the 1960s.

As well as the heavily fortified Hamah compound, linked to Syria’s chemical and biological weapons programme, the warplanes hit military facilities manned by Republican Guards on Qasioun Mountain overlooking Damascus and the nearby Barada River basin.

Residents, activists and rebel sources said the area is a supply route to the Lebanese Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, but missiles for Hezbollah did not appear to be the only target.

Air defences comprising Russian-made surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns on Qasioun and overlooking the rebellious Damascus district of Barzeh were also hit, they said. Their statements could not be verified due to restrictions on media.

“The destruction appeared to be massive,” said one activist in Damascus, who did not want to be identified.

Russia said it was concerned the chances of foreign military intervention in Syria were growing, suggesting its worry stemmed in part from reports about the alleged use of chemical weapons in the conflict that has killed 70,000 people.

“The further escalation of armed confrontation sharply increases the risk of creating new areas of tension, in addition to Syria, in Lebanon, and the destabilisation of the so-far relatively calm atmosphere on the Lebanese-Israeli border,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

Assad’s government accused Israel of effectively helping al Qaeda Islamist “terrorists” and said the strikes “open the door to all possibilities”. It said many civilians had died but there was no official casualty toll.

CALCULATING

Israeli officials said that, as after a similar attack in the same area in January, they were calculating Assad would not fight a well-armed neighbour while preoccupied with survival against a revolt that grew from pro-democracy protests in 2011.

Israel has not confirmed the latest attacks officially, but has reinforced anti-missile batteries in the north. It said two rockets landed, by mistake, on Monday, in the Golan Heights, the Israeli-occupied area near Syria’s border with Israel.

“They were fired erroneously as a by-product of internal conflict in Syria,” an Israeli military spokesman said.

Syria would be no match for Israel in any direct military showdown. But Damascus, with its leverage over Lebanon’s Hezbollah, could consider proxy attacks through Lebanon.

Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Iran’s Shi’ite Islam, denied Israel’s attack was on arms for Hezbollah. Hezbollah did not comment.

Moscow and Beijing have blocked Western-backed measures against Assad at the United Nations Security Council, opposing any proposal that has his exit from power as a starting point.

Allegations of the use of chemical weapons – long described by Western leaders as a “red line” that would have serious consequences – have added to regional and international tension.

After months of increasingly bitter fighting, Assad’s government and the rebels have each accused the other of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks.

In Washington, an influential U.S. senator introduced a bill on Monday that would provide weapons to some Syrian rebels.

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement that Assad had crossed a red line and “the U.S. must play a role in tipping the scales toward opposition groups”.

President Barack Obama has taken a cautious approach to the reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, saying he would not allow himself to be pressured prematurely into deeper intervention in the conflict.

The White House has said the Syrian government has probably used chemical weapons. A U.S. official said on Monday Washington had no information to suggest that rebels had used them.

Syria is not part of the international treaty that bans poison gas but has said it would never use it in an internal conflict. Rebels say they have no access to chemical arms.

A U.N. inquiry commission said on Monday war crimes investigators had reached no conclusions on whether any side in the Syrian war has used chemical weapons, after a suggestion from one of the team that rebel forces had done so.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk in Moscow, Michael Martina in Beijing, Marwan Makdesi in Damascus, Jonathon Burch in Ankara and Patricia Zengerle in Washington Writing by Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Peter Graff and Mohammad Zargham)

Palestinians hailed Google’s move as a virtual victory on the long path to the state they seek in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, which Israel seized in the 1967 war.

With bilateral negotiations stalled for 2-1/2 years over Jewish settlement building, the Palestinians have campaigned for foreign recognition of statehood, and were upgraded to “non-member state” at the United Nations in November.

Following the U.N. lead, Google’s Palestinian homepage and other products previously labeled “Palestinian Territories” were changed on May 1 to read “Palestine”.

“I think that the Google decision from the last few days is very, very problematic,” said Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“When a company like Google comes along and supports this line, it actually pushes peace further away, pushes away negotiations, and creates among the Palestinian leadership the illusion that in this manner they can achieve the result,” he told Israel’s Army Radio.

“Without direct negotiation with us, nothing will happen.”

A Google spokesman in Israel referred Reuters to a statement from last week in which it said: “We are following the lead of the U.N. … and other international organizations.”

Israel was furious at the U.N. upgrade last November, which was opposed by the United States but passed by an overwhelming majority, and reacted by withholding Palestinian government funds and announcing more settlement building.

An adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the move as a “victory for Palestine and a step toward its liberation”.

Google had “put Palestine on the Internet map, making it a geographical reality”, the adviser, Sabri Saidam, told the official news agency WAFA, adding that the Palestinians had invited Google’s cartographers to come and gather more data for their online maps.

Google Maps currently shows little or no detail for major Palestinian towns such as Nablus and Ramallah, while many Jewish West Bank settlements have streets and parks clearly labeled.

Saidam said Israeli opposition to Google’s new rubric was rooted in fear that “the recognition will destroy Israel’s concept of ‘Judea and Samaria’” – the biblical names that the Jewish state uses for the West Bank.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria’s civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable stand off with the Jewish state for decades.

But Israel has repeatedly warned it will not let Assad’s ally Hezbollah receive hi-tech weaponry. Intelligence sources said Israel attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday that were awaiting transfer to Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring Lebanon.

Syria accused Israel of belligerence meant to shore up the outgunned anti-Assad rebels – drawing a denial on Monday from veteran Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Interviewed on Israel Radio, Hanegbi said the Netanyahu government aimed to avoid “an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime”.

Hanegbi noted Israel had not formally acknowledged carrying out the raids in an effort to allow Assad to save face, adding that Netanyahu began a scheduled visit to China on Sunday to signal the sense of business as usual.

“DIPLOMATIC CHANNELS”

The Assad government has condemned the air strikes as tantamount to a “declaration of war” and threatened unspecified retaliation.

But Hanegbi said Israel was ready for any development if the Syrians misinterpreted its messages and was ready “to respond harshly if indeed there is aggression against us”.

As a precaution, Israel deployed two of its five Iron Dome rocket interceptors near the Syrian and Lebanese fronts and grounded civilian aircraft in the area, although an Israeli military spokesman said the airspace would reopen on Monday.

Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper, said the Netanyahu government had informed Assad through diplomatic channels that it did not intend to meddle in Syria’s civil war.

Israeli officials did not immediately confirm the report, but one suggested that such indirect contacts were not required.

“Given the public remarks being made by senior Israeli figures to reassure Assad, it’s pretty clear what the message is,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Military analysts say Syria would be no match for Israel, a U.S. defense ally, in any confrontation. But Damascus, with its leverage over Hezbollah, could still consider proxy attacks through Lebanon, where Israel’s conventional forces fought an inconclusive war against the Iranian-backed guerrillas in 2006.

Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Shi’ite Islam, denied Israel’s attack was on arms. Shi’ite Hezbollah did not comment.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria’s civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable stand off with the Jewish state for decades.

But Israel has repeatedly warned it will not let Assad’s ally Hezbollah receive hi-tech weaponry. Intelligence sources said Israel attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday that were awaiting transfer to Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighbouring Lebanon.

Syria accused Israel of belligerence meant to shore up the outgunned anti-Assad rebels – drawing a denial on Monday from veteran Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Interviewed on Israel Radio, Hanegbi said the Netanyahu government aimed to avoid “an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime”.

Hanegbi noted Israel had not formally acknowledged carrying out the raids in an effort to allow Assad to save face, adding that Netanyahu began a scheduled visit to China on Sunday to signal the sense of business as usual.

“DIPLOMATIC CHANNELS”

The Assad government has condemned the air strikes as tantamount to a “declaration of war” and threatened unspecified retaliation.

But Hanegbi said Israel was ready for any development if the Syrians misinterpreted its messages and was ready “to respond harshly if indeed there is aggression against us”.

As a precaution, Israel deployed two of its five Iron Dome rocket interceptors near the Syrian and Lebanese fronts and grounded civilian aircraft in the area, although an Israeli military spokesman said the airspace would reopen on Monday.

Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper, said the Netanyahu government had informed Assad through diplomatic channels that it did not intend to meddle in Syria’s civil war.

Israeli officials did not immediately confirm the report, but one suggested that such indirect contacts were not required.

“Given the public remarks being made by senior Israeli figures to reassure Assad, it’s pretty clear what the message is,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Military analysts say Syria would be no match for Israel, a U.S. defence ally, in any confrontation. But Damascus, with its leverage over Hezbollah, could still consider proxy attacks through Lebanon, where Israel’s conventional forces fought an inconclusive war against the Iranian-backed guerrillas in 2006.

Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Shi’ite Islam, denied Israel’s attack was on arms. Shi’ite Hezbollah did not comment. (Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jon Boyle)

The state is prosecuting an Arab Israeli who briefly joined the rebel forces fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

Arrested after his return to Israel, Hikmat Massarwa, a 29-year-old baker, is accused of unlawful military training, having contacts with foreign agents and traveling to a hostile state.

The trial hinges on the unanswered question of who, if anyone, Israel favors in the war and if the rebels will turn out to be friends or enemies.

The prosecutor in Lod is trying to depict Massarwa as having aligned himself with foes of Israel, but Judge Avraham Yaakov is struggling for clarity. “There’s no legal guidance regarding the rebel groups fighting in Syria,” he told a recent hearing.

Matters were simpler during the decades of unchallenged Assad family rule.

Technically Israeli is at war with its northern neighbor. It captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East War, built settlements and annexed the land. But belligerence was rare and the borderland has remained largely quiet for decades.

Assad’s Syria is part of the so-called Axis of Resistance along with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both arch enemies of the Jewish state. But Syria itself avoided open conflict.

Israel was slow to welcome the uprising against Assad when it broke out in March 2011. Though some leaders now call for his overthrow, planners fret about what might follow.

“The question for us is no longer whether it is good or not if Assad stays in power, but how do we control our interests in this divided, murky situation which could last for decades,” said Ofer Shelah of the Yesh Atid party, which is part of the government coalition.

The dilemma has grown more acute since Islamist fighters linked to al-Qaeda assumed a prominent role in the rebels’ battle plans.

Israelis believe one in 10 of the rebels is a jihadi who might turn his gun on them once Assad is gone. They also worry that Hezbollah guerrillas allied to Assad could get hold of his chemical arsenal and other advanced weaponry.

So Israel has acted with restraint on Syria – shooting at its troops across the occupied Golan Heights only when hit by stray fire and playing down an Israeli airstrike on a suspected Hezbollah-bound convoy in January.

Officials say Israel has also been cool to Western proposals to increase aid to the Syrian rebels to help them match Assad’s superior armed forces.

One Israeli official told Reuters that he responds to any suggestions of a foreign military role with the question: “Do you really know on whose behalf you’ll be intervening?”

MIXED MESSAGES

But with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presiding over a new, right-leaning coalition and the Israeli military stretched by keeping vigil over several fronts – including Islamist-ruled Egypt – the message has been far from uniform.

Netanyahu may have contributed to this by framing Iran and its nuclear program as Israel’s overriding regional concern, bolstering the case for removing Tehran’s ally Assad.

When an Israeli intelligence analyst said last week that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons, both the Netanyahu government and its foreign allies were blindsided, according to officials.

Washington confirmed the Israeli assessment, thus posing a problem for U.S. President Barack Obama, who had said use of chemical arms would be a “red line”.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister urged U.S. action in Syria – a call slapped down by more senior figures.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, said it was not making any policy recommendations to Obama on Syria.

“We think this issue is very complex,” he told Reuters.

Several officials said Israel would be unlikely to attack Syria unilaterally unless it had evidence that chemical weapons had been handed over to Hezbollah.

Lacking enough of the specialized ground troops that would be needed for a search-and-destroy sweep of chemical weapons, Israel would probably have to rely on aerial bombing.

The Netanyhau government might even acquiesce if the rebels acquire the chemical weapons, on the assumption that the insurgents were mainstream Syrians keen to rebuild their country and loath to invite catastrophic war with Israel.

“If the jihadis get the chemical weapons, that’s very bad, but there’s still the hope that these people lack the hard-core military wherewithal, and required technical support in Syria, that would be required to use them,” one Israeli official said.

Indeed, Israeli planners are debating to what extent the radical Sunni Islamists fighting Assad could eventually constitute a direct threat to Israel.

The chief military spokesman, Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, sounded the alarm last month by saying the “Global Jihad” – meaning al Qaeda and its affiliates – wielded the most clout on the Syrian-held side of the Golan Heights.

Other Israeli authorities are more optimistic. The Mossad intelligence agency estimates that Syria’s entrenched secularism will dilute enmity to Israel, according to one official.

“The Islamists there aren’t all Salafists, and the Salafists aren’t all al Qaeda, by any means,” the official said.

“We may not make peace, but I think we might find some kind of dialogue, if only for the sake of mutual deterrence.”

Israel has given no indication that it already has contacts with Syria’s opposition. But it has coordinated closely on security with Jordan, a supporter of some rebel factions.

Back in Judge Yaakov’s courtroom, the fate of Massarwa, who faces a maximum of 15 years in jail if convicted, rests on whether the state can prove there is danger to Israel from the Free Syrian Army unit he stayed with for a week in March.

Massarwa’s lawyer, Helal Jaber, hopes the logic of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” will win clemency for his client, who went to Syria via Turkey in search of a missing brother who had separately joined the rebels.

“The greatest democracies in the world, including the United States, are supporting the opposition to Assad,” Jaber said. “So how can Israel fault someone for doing the same?”

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Washington and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

After years of veiled warnings that Israel might strike the Islamic Republic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out an ultimatum at the United Nations last September.

Iran, he said, must not amass enough uranium at 20 percent fissile purity to fuel one bomb if enriched further. To ram the point home, he drew a red line across a cartoon bomb, guaranteeing him front page headlines around the world.

However, a respected Israeli ex-spymaster says Iran has skillfully circumvented the challenge. Other influential voices say the time has passed when Israel can hit out at Iran alone, leaving it dependent on U.S. decision-makers.

“If there was a good window of opportunity to attack, it was six months ago – not necessarily today,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. Pressure from Washington, he said, had forced Israel to drop its strike plan.

Israel has long insisted on the need for a convincing military threat and setting clear lines beyond which Iran’s nuclear activity should not advance, calling this the only way to persuade Iran that it must bow to international pressure.

Serving officials argue that Netanyahu’s repeated warnings of the menace posed by Iran’s nuclear project have pushed the issue to the top of the global agenda and helped generate some of the toughest economic sanctions ever imposed on a nation.

But some officials have also questioned the wisdom of his red line, arguing that such brinkmanship can generate unwelcome ambiguity – as the United States has discovered with its contested stance on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief who runs a Tel Aviv think-tank, suggested last week that Israel had also got itself into a tangle, saying Iran had expanded its nuclear capacity beyond the Israeli limit, without triggering alarms.

“Today it can be said that the Iranians have crossed the red line set by Netanyahu at the U.N. assembly,” Yadlin told a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which he heads.

DRUM BEAT RESUMES

Netanyahu’s office declined to respond to Yadlin’s remarks, noting that the prime minister, in recent public statements, had said Iran was “continuing to get closer to the red line”.

Tehran denies there is any military component to its nuclear activities, saying it is focused only on civilian energy needs. It charges that Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, is the greater regional threat.

Keeping in step with Netanyahu, Israeli defence and military officials issued clear warnings this month that Israel was still prepared to go it alone against Iran, once more beating the drums of war after months of relative quiet.

“We will do what is necessary when it is necessary,” armed forces chief of staff Benny Gantz told Israel Radio on April 16.

But there is increasing scepticism within diplomatic circles about the viability of such an option. Envoys doubt that the Israeli military could now make much of a dent on Iran’s far-flung, well-fortified nuclear installations.

“If nothing happened last year, I struggle to see why it will happen this year,” said a top Western diplomat in Tel Aviv, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivities.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has done little to bolster belief in unilateral action, making clear this month that he thought U.S. President Barack Obama would be the one to go to war against Iran if nuclear diplomacy failed.

“He knows no one else will do it,” Peres told Israeli TV.

The United States offered Netanyahu a new array of military hardware last week, including refuelling tankers that could be used to get fighter jets to and from Iranian targets.

However, Israel cannot match the sort of firepower that the United States could bring to a battlefield. For example, Israel lacks the biggest bunker-busting bombs that experts say would be needed to penetrate Iran’s underground Fordow enrichment plant.

Such limitations always cast doubt on a possible Israeli assault and the more time passes, the more the doubts grow.

Ehud Barak, the previous Israeli defence minister, said in November 2011 that within nine months it would probably be impossible to halt Iran because it was increasing the number of centrifuges and its network of sites, creating what he termed a “zone of immunity”. Seventeen months have gone by since then.

RECONVERSION RATES

Washington has promised Israel it will not let Iran develop a nuclear bomb. Israelis get jittery, however, because they have set a very different clock for when they believe it would be necessary to intervene – hence the importance of the red line.

The Israelis make no distinction between Iran developing the capacity to build an atomic bomb and having the actual weapon. Yadlin told the INSS conference that as soon as Tehran could put just one rudimentary device on a boat and sail it to an Israeli port, it was a de-facto nuclear-armed nation.

Some analysts question whether Iran would indeed attack Israel if it had an atom bomb, or even try to build one, rather than just establish an apparent nuclear capability to project deterrence and regional power. To fire a nuclear weapon at Israel, they say, could spell the ruin of the Islamic Republic in counter-strikes by a foe with a far bigger nuclear arsenal.

Gantz himself said last year he felt Iran’s leadership was “very rational” and unlikely to build an atomic bomb.

The U.S. concern is to prevent Iran, which has called for Israel’s destruction, from reaching the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb – a nuance at variance with Israel’s position that provides a longer window of opportunity to continue diplomacy.

Exasperated by Washington’s refusal to set a clear ultimatum, Netanyahu came up with his 240-250 kg (530-550 pound) limit for 20 percent enriched uranium, hoping this would concentrate minds. The Iranians stayed below this threshold by converting 110 kg of the gaseous material to solid form that they say is destined to power a research reactor.

Yadlin said that rather than turn all of this into solid reactor fuel, Iran had kept 80 kg of it in the interim powdered state. That, he said, could be converted back to original gas form in around a week, inflating the stockpile beyond 250 kg.

With the red line in possible jeopardy, and unilateral military action in doubt, one security official suggested that Israel might turn to covert sabotage, with renewed focus on those specifically working on the 20 percent enrichment.

Five Iranian scientists and academics have been killed or attacked since 2010 in incidents believed to have targeted Iran’s nuclear programme. Israel has remained silent about the attacks and other known acts of sabotage at Iranian sites. (Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich)

After years of veiled warnings that Israel might strike the Islamic Republic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out an ultimatum at the United Nations last September.

Iran, he said, must not amass enough uranium at 20 percent fissile purity to fuel one bomb if enriched further. To ram the point home, he drew a red line across a cartoon bomb, guaranteeing him front page headlines around the world.

However, a respected Israeli ex-spymaster says Iran has skillfully circumvented the challenge. Other influential voices say the time has passed when Israel can hit out at Iran alone, leaving it dependent on U.S. decision-makers.

“If there was a good window of opportunity to attack, it was six months ago – not necessarily today,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. Pressure from Washington, he said, had forced Israel to drop its strike plan.

Israel has long insisted on the need for a convincing military threat and setting clear lines beyond which Iran’s nuclear activity should not advance, calling this the only way to persuade Iran that it must bow to international pressure.

Serving officials argue that Netanyahu’s repeated warnings of the menace posed by Iran’s nuclear project have pushed the issue to the top of the global agenda and helped generate some of the toughest economic sanctions ever imposed on a nation.

But some officials have also questioned the wisdom of his red line, arguing that such brinkmanship can generate unwelcome ambiguity – as the United States has discovered with its contested stance on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief who runs a Tel Aviv think-tank, suggested last week that Israel had also got itself into a tangle, saying Iran had expanded its nuclear capacity beyond the Israeli limit, without triggering alarms.

“Today it can be said that the Iranians have crossed the red line set by Netanyahu at the U.N. assembly,” Yadlin told a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which he heads.

DRUM BEAT RESUMES

Netanyahu’s office declined to respond to Yadlin’s remarks, noting that the prime minister, in recent public statements, had said Iran was “continuing to get closer to the red line”.

Tehran denies there is any military component to its nuclear activities, saying it is focused only on civilian energy needs. It charges that Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, is the greater regional threat.

Keeping in step with Netanyahu, Israeli defense and military officials issued clear warnings this month that Israel was still prepared to go it alone against Iran, once more beating the drums of war after months of relative quiet.

“We will do what is necessary when it is necessary,” armed forces chief of staff Benny Gantz told Israel Radio on April 16.

But there is increasing skepticism within diplomatic circles about the viability of such an option. Envoys doubt that the Israeli military could now make much of a dent on Iran’s far-flung, well-fortified nuclear installations.

“If nothing happened last year, I struggle to see why it will happen this year,” said a top Western diplomat in Tel Aviv, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivities.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has done little to bolster belief in unilateral action, making clear this month that he thought U.S. President Barack Obama would be the one to go to war against Iran if nuclear diplomacy failed.

“He knows no one else will do it,” Peres told Israeli TV.

The United States offered Netanyahu a new array of military hardware last week, including refueling tankers that could be used to get fighter jets to and from Iranian targets.

However, Israel cannot match the sort of firepower that the United States could bring to a battlefield. For example, Israel lacks the biggest bunker-busting bombs that experts say would be needed to penetrate Iran’s underground Fordow enrichment plant.

Such limitations always cast doubt on a possible Israeli assault and the more time passes, the more the doubts grow.

Ehud Barak, the previous Israeli defense minister, said in November 2011 that within nine months it would probably be impossible to halt Iran because it was increasing the number of centrifuges and its network of sites, creating what he termed a “zone of immunity”. Seventeen months have gone by since then.

RECONVERSION RATES

Washington has promised Israel it will not let Iran develop a nuclear bomb. Israelis get jittery, however, because they have set a very different clock for when they believe it would be necessary to intervene – hence the importance of the red line.

The Israelis make no distinction between Iran developing the capacity to build an atomic bomb and having the actual weapon. Yadlin told the INSS conference that as soon as Tehran could put just one rudimentary device on a boat and sail it to an Israeli port, it was a de-facto nuclear-armed nation.

Some analysts question whether Iran would indeed attack Israel if it had an atom bomb, or even try to build one, rather than just establish an apparent nuclear capability to project deterrence and regional power. To fire a nuclear weapon at Israel, they say, could spell the ruin of the Islamic Republic in counter-strikes by a foe with a far bigger nuclear arsenal.

Gantz himself said last year he felt Iran’s leadership was “very rational” and unlikely to build an atomic bomb.

The U.S. concern is to prevent Iran, which has called for Israel’s destruction, from reaching the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb – a nuance at variance with Israel’s position that provides a longer window of opportunity to continue diplomacy.

Exasperated by Washington’s refusal to set a clear ultimatum, Netanyahu came up with his 240-250 kg (530-550 pound) limit for 20 percent enriched uranium, hoping this would concentrate minds. The Iranians stayed below this threshold by converting 110 kg of the gaseous material to solid form that they say is destined to power a research reactor.

Yadlin said that rather than turn all of this into solid reactor fuel, Iran had kept 80 kg of it in the interim powdered state. That, he said, could be converted back to original gas form in around a week, inflating the stockpile beyond 250 kg.

With the red line in possible jeopardy, and unilateral military action in doubt, one security official suggested that Israel might turn to covert sabotage, with renewed focus on those specifically working on the 20 percent enrichment.

Five Iranian scientists and academics have been killed or attacked since 2010 in incidents believed to have targeted Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has remained silent about the attacks and other known acts of sabotage at Iranian sites.

(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich)

The challenge by Zev Elkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, underscored tension this week over the allies’ assessments on Syria, as well as longer-running disputes about how aggressively to confront Iran’s nuclear program.

The White House said on Thursday the Syrian government had probably employed chemical arms on a small scale against rebels. The disclosure created a bind for President Barack Obama, who has declared such use a “red line” that must not be crossed.

It was also a shift from Washington’s skeptical response to Tuesday’s publication by the Israeli military of intelligence findings that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons repeatedly in recent months.

“The Iranians are watching, the whole world is watching too, and we should also see what happens,” Elkin told Israel’s Army Radio, when asked how U.S. strategy on Syria might unfold.

“There is a question here of when you set a red line, do you stand behind it?”

Israel has threatened to strike Syria, an enemy with which it previously maintained a decades-old truce, to prevent Assad’s chemical arsenal falling into the hands of jihadi insurgents or of Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

There has been similar Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran. But the Jewish state, with its military and diplomatic clout limited in a volatile region, has made clear it would prefer Washington to take the lead on any major offensive.

Commenting on the shift in Washington’s stance on Syria’s chemical weapons, Elkin said: “If, until today, there has been an effort to ignore our opinion, to a degree … now that the Americans’ red line has apparently been crossed, there is a test.

“It is clear that if the United States wants to and the international community wants to, it could act – inter alia, militarily – to take control of the chemical weapons, and then all the fears … will not be relevant.”

He did not elaborate on what U.S. tactics he envisaged.

Wary of being drawn into another Middle East war in the name of curbing weapons of mass destruction, the Obama administration said it wanted definitive proof before intervening in Syria and was consulting with allies about possible steps.

The Assad government, shunned by much of the West as it battles an insurgency now in its third year, has denied using chemical arms – and hedged on whether it even possesses them.

Elkin said he expected world powers to clarify their position on Syria “in the coming days”.

“It could be that the moment the international community understands that indeed the red lines were crossed, and indeed the weaponry was used, they will understand that there is no avoiding this action – that instead of leaving things in the fog, it is time to take control (of the arsenal),” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by John Stonestreet)

With Iran’s presidential election approaching in June there
has been a pause in hawkish rhetoric by Israel, which has long
hinted at possible air strikes to deny its arch-foe any means to
make an atomic bomb, while efforts by six world powers to find a
negotiated solution with Tehran have proved fruitless so far.

“We believe that the military option, which is well
discussed, should be the last resort,” Israeli Defence Minister
Moshe Yaalon told reporters at a news conference with Hagel.

“And there are other tools to be used and to be exhausted,”
Yaalon said, listing diplomacy, economic sanctions and “moral
support” for domestic opponents of Iran’s hardline Islamist
leadership.

Iran has denied seeking nuclear weapons capability, saying
it is enriching uranium only for domestic energy purposes while
calling for the elimination of the Jewish state. Israel is
widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal.

U.S. President Barack Obama has in the past clashed with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how urgent the
need may be to consider military action against Iran. Washington
has suggested more time should be given for concerted diplomacy
combined with sanctions pressure to produce a peaceful solution.

But with Obama recently installed in his second term, and
Netanyahu in his third, the allies have publicly closed ranks.
The United States projects more defence aid for Israel after the
current disbursements of some $3 billion a year expire in 2017.
And Hagel unveiled the planned sale to Israel of missiles,
warplane radars, troop transport planes and refuelling jets.

“These decisions underscore that the military-to-military
cooperation between the U.S. and Israel is stronger than ever,
and that defence cooperation will only continue to deepen in the
future,” Hagel said.

By contrast, the Bush administration in 2008 declined to
provide Israel with refuelling tankers and missiles that might
be used in a strike on Iran.

MILITARY OPTIONS REMAIN ON TABLE

Before taking the helm at the Pentagon, Hagel had stirred
ire among pro-Israel Americans for remarks including scepticism
about the feasibility and desirability of such military action.

But in Israel, the second foreign country he has visited as
defence secretary after Afghanistan, Hagel hewed to Obama’s
line. “All military options and every option must remain on the
table in dealing with Iran,” he said.

“I support the president’s position on Iran. And it’s very
simple and I have stated it here … Our position is Iran will
not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon – the prevention of
Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Period.”

Iranian media reported on Monday that Iran and officials
from the United Nations nuclear watchdog would hold a new round
of talks on May 21 in Vienna. The International Atomic Energy
Agency wants inspectors to restart a long-stalled investigation
in Iran’s suspected atomic bomb research.

From Israel, Hagel travels to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates. The latter two Gulf Arab
countries, which are also wary of Iran’s nuclear ambitions,
stand to win a major U.S. arms sale.

After lengthy disagreement, Israeli and U.S. estimates of
when Iran might be able to produce a first nuclear weapon now
largely dovetail to a time frame of about a year.

Hagel also said that non-military pressure on Iran has yet
to be exhausted. “The sanctions on Iran are as potent and deep
and wide a set of international sanctions that we have ever seen
on any country. And those will continue to increase,” he said.

“Whether it leads to an outcome that we desire remains to be
seen … and as I said, the military option is always an
option.”

After the news conference, Hagel boarded an Israeli military
helicopter for an aerial tour of the Golan Heights frontier -
Israeli-occupied territory on the edge of Syria’s civil war.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark
Heinrich)