IranIDF ordered to continue preparations for striking Iran’s nuclear sites this year

The negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program continue, with an eye to replacing, by June, the current temporary agreement with a permanent one, but Israel let it be known that it is continuing to its preparations for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Haaretz reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon have instructed the IDF to continue its preparations for carrying out such a strike, at a cost estimated to be at

least ten billion shekels ($2.89 billion) this year.

The Knesset joint committee held hearings on IDF plans in January and February, and three MKs told Haaretz that deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, and planning directorate official Brig. Gen. Agai Yehezkel, told the committee that ten to twelve billion shekels of the IDF budget would be allocated this year for preparations for a strike on Iran. This amount is similar to the 2013 allocation for this purpose.

Some members of the Knesset committee asked the generals whether there was a justification to continue with such expensive preparations in light of the interim agreement reached between the world powers and Iran in November 2013, a 6-month agreement which went into effect 20 January, and while there are on-going discussions between Iran and the P5+1 over a permanent agreement.

Yehezkel and Eizenkot responded that the IDF had received explicit directive to continue refining the plans and readying the forces for a possible independent strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities, regardless of the talks now taking place between Iran and the West.

Only Netanyahu and Ya’alon can issue such directives.

In the last few weeks, Netanyahu, in his public utterances, has come back to the theme of an Israeli strike against Iran.

“My friends, I believe that letting Iran enrich uranium would open up the floodgates,” Netanyahu said at the AIPAC conference earlier this month. “That must not happen. And we will make sure it does not happen.”

Ya’alon, who opposed an independent Israeli military operation against Iran while Ehud Barak served as defense minister, earlier this week publicly said, in a speech at Tel Aviv University, that he has changed his mind on the subject, and that he is more likely now to support an Israeli strike on Iran because he no longer believes the Obama administration would do so, even when presented with evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.

“We think that the United States should be the one leading the campaign against Iran,” Ya’alon said. “But the U.S. has entered talks with them and unfortunately, in the haggling in the Persian bazaar, the Iranians were better. … Therefore, on this matter, we have to behave as though we have nobody to look out for us but ourselves.”