Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike to prevent arch-foe Iran from going nuclear, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency said on Monday, according to AFP.

“I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of pre-emption and not of retaliation,” Shabtai Shavit told a conference.

Shavit, who served as chief of Israel’s foreign spy agency from 1989 to 1996, was speaking at a conference held at the hawkish Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.

“To use retaliation as the main strategy means to sit idly and wait until the enemy comes to attack you,” a university statement quoted Shavit as saying.

“But we are dealing with an enemy that plans all the time and waits for the opportunity to arise in order to attack, so what is the point, even morally, to wait and do something only when we are attacked,” he said.

Israel, which has the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal, regards Iran as its principal threat after repeated predictions by the Islamic republic’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state’s demise.

Along with the West, it suspects Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of its nuclear programme, a claim Tehran denies.

Israel has backed US-led efforts to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability through sanctions, but has also refused to rule out military force.

In 1981 Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor and reportedly also attacked a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in 2007.

Iran insists that its nuclear programme is aimed solely at power generation and medical research and says that the international community should focus its attention on Israel, which, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We’ve had four terrorist attacks in less than a year, two of which succeeded in killing people and another two which only failed because of the incompetence of the terrorist. Iran is a year or less away from getting a nuclear weapon. Turkey is rapidly sliding towards Islamism. North Korea is doing their best to restart the Korean War.

And what does Barbara Boxer think is the greatest national-security threat facing us in the next generation? Carbon dioxide.

General Stanley McChrystal says coalition forces are working to stop Iran from providing material to the Taliban.

Jewish leaders in the United States now believe that new sanctions being weighed against Iran will still leave an inevitable choice: Either accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or launch a military strike against its nuclear facilities.

That’s the sobering conclusion that emerges from interviews conducted by The Jewish Daily Forward, the online site of the weekly Forward newspaper.

“Between where we are today and the two ultimate options, there is still a lot of space to be filled,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. “The question is, Will it be filled? What’s contemplated currently seems very inadequate to the task.”

New U.N. sanctions are still being negotiated and will likely target the Iranian economy and companies doing business with the Islamic Republic.

However, previous economic sanctions, including the freezing of Iranian assets, have not deterred Iran from continuing its nuclear program. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that only $43 million in Iranian money has been frozen in the U.S. — a quarter of what Iran earns from oil sales in one day.

Harsher sanctions could seek to cut off Iran’s supply of refined petroleum — Iran must import a large percentage of its gasoline.

“If the new sanctions touch on the Iranian energy sector — and that remains to be seen — Iranians are already, we’re told, trying to hoard more refined energy product to avoid any effect on their domestic economy,” Harris told the Forward.

“It’s not clear that even strong sanctions, however well intentioned, will have the desired effect.”

Keith Weissman, former top Iran analyst for the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, said: “There is no question that sanctions like this will hurt Iranian economic activity, but will they do what we want them to do, which is to affect Iran’s ability to do what we don’t want them to do, like build nuclear weapons?”

There is also concern that sanctions that negatively impact average Iranians could push them to rally around their government, which has grown increasingly unpopular at home.

“Who will suffer? Will it be the revolutionary guards, the regime or the people?” said Yoram Peri, director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland.

“If you make the people suffer, generally they will tend to support their government rather than revolt.”

The Insider Report disclosed earlier that President Obama wants to hold off passage of a bill imposing stern American sanctions so he can maintain “flexibility” in dealing with other countries in confronting Iran.

Indeed, effective sanctions will demand “real coordination” among many countries, Peri added.

“And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure whether we’ll get there.”

The difficulty in imposing effective sanctions became clear this past week with reports that a state-owned Chinese refiner made plans to ship 30,000 metric tons of gasoline to Iran. European traders halted shipments earlier this year.

Unipec, the trading arm of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, arranged to load the oil tanker Hongbo with gasoline in Singapore, according to Singapore ship brokers, who said the tanker would likely go directly to Iran.

Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, had not sold gasoline to Iran since 2004, Reuters reported.

A petroleum trader told Reuters:

“As long as there is money to be made, and economic benefits to be taken advantage of, Iran will always find ready sellers of gasoline from the international market.”

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin slammed the Obama administration’s Middle-East policy via her Facebook page Wednesday, saying a failure to confront Iran now would result in a ‘Second Holocaust’ against Israel once the Islamic Republic has nuclear weapons.

“Many, many Americans and our allies know that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the consequences will be catastrophic for our interests in the Middle East, and we want our government to do everything in its power to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes,” she writes.

“Israel would face the gravest threat since its creation. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, the mullahs would be in a position to launch a Second Holocaust.”

“Peace Not Possible if Iran Escapes Real Sanctions” reads the post in which Palin accuses President Obama of dropping the pursuit of “crippling” sanctions against Iran and treating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like an “unwelcome guest” during a recent visit to Washington.

“[J]ust as the Obama administration inexplicably gives up on imposing crippling sanctions on Iran, it’s taken an uncompromising hard line against one country in the Middle East: Israel,” Palin writes. “On his recent visit to Washington, the Israeli Prime Minister was treated like an unwelcome guest, as shown by White House actions such as refusing to be photographed with Israel’s Prime Minister.”

Palin also argues that the Obama administration’s actions have failed to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and that more than one year into Obama’s presidency, his administration has made “no progress” on sanctions.

“The Obama administration has their priorities exactly backwards; we should be working with our friend and democratic ally to stop Iran’s nuclear program, not throwing in the towel on sanctions while treating Israel like an enemy.”

Servicemembers quizzed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates about Afghanistan, the elections in Iraq and the Iran situation during a question-and-answer period here today.

Gates spoke to members of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing. The wing has been deployed here since January 2002 in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The unit has a refueling mission, a reconnaissance mission and also provides air command and control for the U.S. Central Command area of operations, according to AFPS’ Jim Garamone.

Not surprisingly, the airmen and soldiers at the base wanted to know how operations in the theater are going.

Gates told the group that the extraordinary turnout in the Iraqi election held March 7, is a good sign for the future. Before the election, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, told Gates that a turnout of 50 to 55 percent would be good, and a turnout of 55 to 60 percent would be outstanding. “We apparently ended up with 62 percent turnout,” the secretary said. “When you think of where we were three years ago, … the progress there has been extraordinary.”

If the Iraqis can form a government quickly, the secretary said, he sees no reason why the United States could not meet the marks set for the U.S. withdrawal from the country. That would mean all combat units will be out of Iraq by the end of August, and all American forces will be gone by the end of 2011.

The subject shifted to Iran, whose nuclear program disturbs all countries in the region. By coincidence, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad visited neighboring Afghanistan at the same time that Gates was in the country. The Iranian leader met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai the day after Gates met with him.

Some Iranian-made weapons and supplies have ended up in the hands of the Taliban, but that is not yet having a negative impact on the U.S. and international efforts in Afghanistan, Gates said.

The secretary joked that he and Ahmedinijad “exchanged a few words through the media yesterday.”

“I talked about Iran playing a double game with Afghanistan – wanting to have a good relationship with the Afghan government, but wanting to make our lives harder and our lives more difficult,” the secretary said.

But so far, he added, the Iranian level of effort in Afghanistan is not a major problem. “The level of their support to the Taliban has, so far as we can tell, been pretty limited,” Gates said. “I was just trying to express the hope that it wouldn’t get any worse than that.”

The conflict there will take time, the secretary said, though commanders in the country told him during his visit earlier this week that the Taliban momentum has been blunted.

“What I’ve tried to point out to folks is that of the 30,000 troops that the president ordered for the surge in Afghanistan, only about 6,000 are in country so far,” he said.

The rest of the troops will be deployed by the end of August, and that will allow the new strategy in the country to be fully implemented. “The civilian capacity that is equally important to our success there is just arriving and getting in to place as well,” the secretary said.

A key element of the new strategy involves obtaining more trainers for the Afghan security forces. U.S., NATO and international partners are working on getting the training teams in place that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, says he needs, Gates said.

“My view is all the pieces needed to be successful in Afghanistan – including increasing the size of the Afghan national army and police – are just beginning to come together,” he said. “My view is that the signs we have seen so far indicate to me that General McChrystal’s strategy is working, but it’s still a hard fight ahead of us.”

Gates thanked the members of the unit for their efforts. He said they are helping to make a difference in Afghanistan in particular. “You’ve flown thousands of sorties providing support for those in action,” he said. “And I can tell you, I spent a good part of [March 9] in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and those men and women on the ground know how much they owe you all for the support you’ve given them. You save lives every day.”

Gates asked the servicemembers to thank their families for him.

“You couldn’t do what you do without their support back home and I want you to pass along from me personally that we recognize how much they sacrifice and how important their support for you is,” he said.

The secretary then shook the hand of every member of the audience and handed his commemorative coin to them.

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