JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A former Israeli spymaster has branded the country’s leaders unfit to tackle the Iranian nuclear program and “messianic” in the strongest criticism from a security veteran of threats to launch a pre-emptive war.

Other veterans have come out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A former Israeli spymaster has branded the country’s leaders unfit to tackle the Iranian nuclear program because of what he called the “messianic feelings” behind their threats to launch a pre-emptive war on Iran.

Other veterans have come out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently, but the criticism from former domestic intelligence chief Yuval Diskin was especially strong.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Defense Minister Ehud Barak restated Israel’s fears of a nuclear-armed Iran on Thursday after his top general clashed with the government’s line by describing the Islamic republic as “very rational” and unlikely to build a bomb.

Addressing foreign diplomats on Israel’s independence day, Barak said Iranian leaders were not “rational in the Western sense of the word – connoting the quest for status quo and the peaceful resolution of problems”.

JERUSALEM/DUBAI (Reuters) – The United States and its allies are pressing for an end to Iran’s high-level uranium enrichment and the closure of a facility built deep under a mountain as talks on Tehran’s nuclear standoff with the West resume this week In Istanbul.

A return to the table, as the Western allies tighten sanctions over what they say is Tehran’s programme to develop nuclear weapons, had been in doubt after Iran and the P5+1 countries – the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – released conflicting statements about the venue.

JERUSALEM/DUBAI (Reuters) – Talks this week on Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West will resume in Istanbul, Iranian media said, while the U.S. and its allies look set to demand an end to high-level uranium enrichment and the closure of a facility built deep under a mountain.

Friday’s return to negotiations after a year of tightening sanctions over what the West believes is a program to develop nuclear weapons had been in doubt after Iran and the P5+1 countries – the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – released conflicting statements about the venue.

JERUSALEM/BERLIN (Reuters) – Israel declared Nobel Prize-winning German author Guenter Grass “persona non grata” on Sunday over a poem in which the former SS soldier described the Jewish state as a threat to world peace.

Grass would be barred from visiting for his “attempt to inflame hatred against the State of Israel and people of Israel, and thus to advance the idea to which he was publicly affiliated in his past donning of the SS uniform,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai said in a statement.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has signaled it would accept, as a first priority, world powers focusing on persuading Iran to stop higher-level uranium enrichment when they resume stalled nuclear negotiations this week with Tehran.

Israel, which has threatened last-resort attacks on its arch-foe’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails, demanded last month that any negotiated resolution should end all uranium enrichment, high and low level, and remove all fuel already stockpiled by Iran.

TEL AVIV, April 4 (Reuters) – Israel is expanding the reach
of its Iron Dome rocket interceptors to make do with fewer given
the prospect of reduced financial support from a cash-strapped
United States, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Congress approved $205 million for Iron Dome in
fiscal year 2011, which ended on Sept. 30, and President Barack
Obama’s administration said on March 27 it would seek “an
appropriate level of funding” for further acquisitions.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overruled the planned eviction on Tuesday of Jewish settlers from a building in an occupied West Bank city that is flashpoint of tensions with Palestinians.

Some 20 settlers moved into the Hebron building last Thursday at night, seeking to expand a settlement of some 500 families in the heart of a biblical city overwhelmingly populated by Palestinians who regard Israelis as interlopers.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Forty years before becoming Israel’s top decision-making duo, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak first made news on the blood-stained wing of a hijacked Belgian airliner.

Disguised as toussle-haired mechanics, with slim pistols concealed beneath their white overalls, Israel’s future prime minister and defense chief had stormed the Sabena jet at Lod airport near Tel Aviv as part of Sayeret Matkal, the secret special forces regiment which Barak, then aged 30, led.