Obama Won't Trip Over Netanyahu's Iran "Red Line"
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM | Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:20pm EDT
(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama visits Israel next week at the onset of spring - the "red line" previously drawn by his host, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to trigger an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.
But an Israeli-Iranian war, Washington's nightmare as it tries to scale back defense commitments abroad and avoid a draining Gulf oil crisis, does not appear trip-wire imminent.
Officials and analysts say Iran warded off Israel's threat by calibrating mid-level uranium enrichment so it does not accrue enough fuel for a potential first bomb - the threshold Netanyahu warned about in a United Nations speech in September.
He was presenting a worst-case extrapolation from U.N. nuclear inspector reports. The most recent of those, however, found a slowdown in the stockpiling of the 20 percent fissile uranium that Iran, in the face of mounting Western suspicions, says is part of an entirely peaceful program. [ID:nL6N0BLD2Y]
Netanyahu has not publicly revised the spring-to-summer 2013 dating for his "red line". But several Israeli officials privately acknowledged it had been deferred, maybe indefinitely.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/15/us-usa-israel-obama-iran-idUSBRE92E14820130315
