“There is still time for diplomacy to work,” Barak told a forum yesterday at Tel Aviv University. But he said Israel expects the West to establish a “final deadline” for exhausting those efforts. 

“No option should be taken off the table,” he said.

On the leading Israeli news site, YNET, the main headline reads, “Clinton:  U.S. Not Closing the Door to Talks With Iran.”  In a four-line sub-head, it is noted that Clinton’s remarks come “five days after a White House deadline to Iran has passed,” and “two days after Iran issued an ultimatum of its own to the West.” It also notes Clinton’s admission that U.S. efforts to engage Iran on its nuclear program ”have not been encouraging.”

In this morning’s dispatch from Washington in the Jerusalem Post, ”We seek sanctions on Iran gov’t to avoid harming civilians,” Clinton is quoted as saying: “We have avoided using the term deadline, because we want to keep the door to dialogue open. But we’ve also made it clear we can’t continue to wait.”

But reporter Hilary Leila Krieger notes that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs “recently use the term deadline, in the context of the low-enriched uranium deal brokered by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran was given until December 31 to accept.”

The Times also reports that according to Obama administration officials, Iran’s bomb-development effort was “seriously derailed” by the exposure three months ago of the country’s secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qum.

 JAN. 1 – Sobering headlines about Iran, this  New Year’s Day.

The Jerusalem Post’s Hilary Leila Kreiger and Haviv Rettig Gur, in their dispatch from Washington, report the  US has “toughened its rhetoric” and is “looking increasingly to sanctions rather than diplomacy,” now that its deadline to Iran has passed.  The article  includes an interview with Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, who calls for “crippling sanctions.” 

But this article, echoing other Israeli reports, notes a more “calibrated approach” emerging from the Obama administration, possibly taking the form of a new push for a U.N. Security Council resolution. The article suggests the U.S. does not wish to undermine the popular uprising against the Iranian government. Nor does it want to disrupt Iran’s energy markets.  

The Washington Post, in an article by Howard Schneider, also addresses the issue of the Obama administration “falling short” of “crippling sanctions.” It reports that Israel will nonetheless support “narrower”  U.S. sanctions as a “next step.”

Today’s required reading: In the Times (UK), “The world must neutralise Tehran’s toxic threat,” by Liam  Fox, UK Shadow Defence Secretary; and a stinging indictment of Europe in the Wall Street Journal (Europe): “Europe’s trade with Iran’s butchers,” by Goli Ameri, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs.

Israel’s Channel 10 correspondent in Washington, Gil Tamari, reports that Washington instead plans to impose “targeted sanctions,” so as not to undermine the efforts of the popular uprising in Iran now gaining momentum.

Ben Caspit of Israel’s daily, Maariv, notes in a New Year’s eve column that the world’s intelligence community is eagerly awaiting a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran.

The 2007 report concluded that Iran froze its active efforts to manufacture nuclear weapons in 2003. It also maintained that Iran would not have such a capability until at least 2012.

“The report caused a clear sense of shock among many Western intelligence agencies, including [Israel's] Mossad,” Caspit writes. He cites a prevailing view among Western intelligence officials that the NIE findings were altered “for political reasons.”

Caspit maintains that recent British revelations pointing to Iran’s efforts to test a ”neutron initiator” in 2007–the same year the U.S. released its findings, place the NIE report “in a ridiculous light.”

Caspit says the only remaining question is what method Iran will employ as it gets closer to arming a nuclear weapon.  “Will Tehran stop when it’s within each and wait for the right moment, or will it charge ahead until it reaches its goal?”