Israel denies seeing U.S. Iran attack plan

PanARMENIAN.Net - A senior Israeli official denied on Sunday, July 29, a newspaper report that President Barack Obama's national security adviser had briefed Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a U.S. contingency plan to attack Iran should diplomacy fail to curb its nuclear program, Reuters reports.

The Israeli liberal Haaretz daily on Sunday quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying the adviser, Thomas Donilon, had described the plan over dinner with Netanyahu earlier this month.

"Nothing in the article is correct. Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did he present operational plans to attack Iran," the senior official, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters.

Haaretz said the briefing was the most significant effort by high-level U.S. officials who had visited Israel in the past month, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to try to dissuade Israel from launching its own military strike on Iran.

The report coincided with a visit to Israel by Obama's main rival in his reelection bid this November, Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who was due to meet the conservative Netanyahu on Sunday.

Haaretz said Donilon had told Netanyahu the Pentagon was planning for a possible decision to attack Iran's nuclear sites, and had shown him some of the plans. -st-