Defense Minister Ehud Barak will lay out for U.S. President George W. Bush the differences in interpretation regarding Iran's nuclear program between the Israeli security establishment and the American intelligence community.
Sunday, Barak, together with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, met with security officials to discuss the stance Israel will take on the Iranian issue.
At the meeting, officials from the defense establishment, intelligence agencies and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission surveyed a series of documents and intelligence overviews on Iran that will be presented to Bush. These deal, among other things, with the differences between the American intelligence estimate published a few weeks ago and Israel's intelligence assessment of the issue.
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Also Wednesday, Russia's deputy foreign minister for Asian affairs, Aleksandr Losyukov, visiting Israel, discussed the Iranian issue with Deputy Foreign Minister Majali Wahabi and other top ministry officials. Losyukov emphasized that Russia still thinks that "only negotiations with Iran can bring Tehran's military nuclear program to a halt."
Losyukov, who has visited Iran several times in the past year, stressed that "Iran is capable of surviving the sanctions."
"The greater the pressure on the Iranians, the more cohesion there is in the leadership," he said, calling for negotiations with Iran and for "giving them carrots too, not just sticks."
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