DEBKAfile Exclusive: Washington does not buy Israel intelligence’s two-year timeline for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon

May 16, 2006, 4:53 PM (GMT+02:00)

Ten days before Ehud Olmert pays his first visit to Washington as Israeli prime minister, US intelligence is digging in its heels on its own timeline, which estimates that Tehran needs at least three to four years in stages to reach the point of being able to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium for a bomb and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The view there is that military action need not be considered before then.

This distancing from the Israeli estimate cut the ground in advance from the main theme Olmert proposed to raise in his talks with US leaders.

The message Washington delivered in advance of those talks was that Jerusalem would not be allowed to dictate American moves – diplomatic or military – on the Iranian crisis. The Olmert government would be best advised to line up behind Washington on this issue, as did the Sharon government in 2003 before the US invasion of Iraq.

DEBKAfile’s political circles add: In response to this message, the prime minister held last-minute talks this week with the chief of staff and Mossad and military intelligence heads on ways to rework the Israeli position on the Iran question and bring it closer to the definitions held in Washington.

However, Olmert may be confronted in his talks with the president, vice president and secretaries of state and defense, with an American demand for a guarantee against any unilateral Israeli initiative on Iran without first touching base with Washington.

The Bush administration turned tough, according to DEBKAfile’s Washington sources, after receiving a briefing from two high-ranking US officials on secret talks they held with top Israeli government officials last week. The visitors, Stuart Levey, US Treasury Undersecretary for countering terrorist financing and a National Security Council Iran expert, found the Israeli government ill-informed and unfocused on the specifics of the Iranian nuclear program. They also reported that Israeli officials were not on top of the methods by which Iran finances its clandestine nuclear activities and feeds money to Tehran-sponsored terrorist, including the radical Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas.

Another of the subjects Olmert proposes to raise with US leaders is the disarming of Hizballah and its replacement in South Lebanon by the Lebanese army. He also hopes to gain approval for his “convergence plan” for West Bank settlements as a stage before determining Israel’s eastern border - with or without a Palestinian negotiating partner.

The low performance grade the two officials awarded does not bode well for the new Israeli prime minister’s chances of achieving a good rapport and cooperation with the Bush administration on any of these key issues.

His chief advisers leave for Washington Saturday night, May 13, to lay the groundwork for those discussions and an effort to iron out potential crimps.