When the cha­irman of the US joint chi­efs of staff publicly tells Israel that it’s “not prudent at this point” to attack Iran, that “a strike … would be destabilising”, and US president Barack Obama sends two high-level envoys to counsel restraint upon Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Neta­ny­ahu, then it means that the US doesn’t want Israel to spring a surprise on it, as it did in the past. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be utterly counterproductive: It would at best set back Iran’s uranium enrichment programme by a few years. It would convince Iran’s leaders that they must build nuclear weapons, on which there seems to be no consensus yet. And it would certainly invite retaliation, with unforeseeable consequences for an already ultra-volatile region, and seriously endanger Israeli civilians’ security.

Officials and analysts close to the Pentagon, quoted in The New York Times, say that “an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear programme would be a huge and highly complex operation”, which is qualitatively different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, and a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in 2007. To strike Iran, Israeli pilots would have to fly more than 1,600 km “across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defences, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.” According to former CIA director Michael V Hayden, such strikes are “beyond” Israel’s “capacity”, mainly because of the distance and scale of the task involved.

Many strategic analysts believe that the US alone can strike Iran’s four major nuclear sites — two uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow (near Qom), a heavy-water reactor at Arak, and a uranium hexafluoride plant at Isfahan. But it’s not certain if even the US can fully destroy the Natanz facility, believed to be buried under 10 metres of concrete, and the Fordow site, which is built into a mountain. Israel almost certainly lacks the inventory of “bunker-buster” bombs needed to gravely damage hardened underground targets.

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan has publicly stated that attacking Iran would start an unwanted war with Hamas and Hezbollah, which have thousands of rockets that can reach Israel: “I am not convinced that Syria will not be drawn into the war … we will see a massive offensive of missiles against our home front. Civilians will be on the front lines. What is Israel’s defensive capability against such an offensive? I know of no solution …” Yet, many Israeli leaders believe that a strike against Iran will have overt or tacit US support; Iran’s nuclear activities must be crippled before it enters the “zone of immunity”, beyond which its capacity to acquire nuclear weapons would become irreversible; and Iran, unamenable to diplomacy, is only months away from that fateful point. They may be seriously mistaken. By many indications, Iran is probably two years away from acquiring enough high-enriched uranium for an atomic bomb and from forging it into an explosive device. It has had major trouble with the bulk of its centrifuges (the IR-1 type, believed to be based on P-1, a crude AQ Khan Laboratories design). These are prone to frequent breakdowns, and according to the hawkish Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), their performance has recently declined. Iran has also deployed a small number of more advanced IR-2m and IR-4 machines, based on Khan’s P-2 design, which is less prone to breakdowns. Iran has tried to substitute a critical hard-to-procure material, maraging steel, with carbon fibre. But this poses technical challenges. Iran’s carbon fibre is also of poor quality.

The recent alarm over Iran was raised in the latest International Atomic Energy Ag­ency (IAEA) report, which concludes that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device”, and they may still be continuing. This has created the impression that Iran has violated its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and IAEA’s “comprehensive safeguards agreements”.

However, an analysis of the report shows that there’s no evidence that Iran has resumed its past clandestine activities to develop nuclear weapons capability, or that it’s in breach of its obligations. The report consists of an 11-page main body, and a 14-page annex based on western intelligence sources — primarily from a laptop computer spirited out of Iran in 2004. Its provenance is attributed to Mossad. The material pertained to 1998-2003. A US National Intelligence Estimate concluded in 2007 that Iran stopped these activities in 2003. The allegation of their resumption isn’t established through independent corroboration.

More important, there is no evidence in the main report that Iran ever crossed the legal “red line”— diverting materials from a civilian to a military programme. Iran has “decl­ared to the agency” all the 24 facilities where nuclear material is “customarily used”. The report says “all nuclear material” there remains “under the agency’s containment and surveillance” and they have operated “as declared”.

India has refused to back sanctions against Iran. It should hold firm and not support the unsubstantiated ch­arge that Iranian agents were behind the recent attack on an Israeli official’s car in Delhi. The forensic evidence — use of limpet bombs typical of Mossad-inspired assassinations of four Iranian nuclear scientists — points elsewhere. So does Iran’s political interest in maintaining friendly relations with India. There’s still scope for diplomacy.

(The writer is an independent commentator on political and economic issues)