I say let em go it alone. Israel will be the death of the U.S. if we let it. And we’re letting it. This is nothing more than Olmert telling Bush…… if you don’t do something, I will. So go ahead big mouth. Do something. How about you get rid of your nuclear weapons?

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, dramatically raised the stakes in the international showdown with Iran last night, with a clear warning that his country was prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“The Jewish people, with the scars of the Holocaust fresh on its body, cannot afford to allow itself to face threats of annihilation once again,” Mr Olmert said in a speech to a high-level security conference in Herzliya. “No nation has the right even to consider its position. It is the obligation of every country to act against this will all its might.” “We can stand up against nuclear threats and even prevent them,” he said.

Israeli military officials warned this week that Israel - acting alone or in coordination with the US - could launch preemptive military strikes against Iran before the end of this year.

Israel describes Iran-s nuclear programme as an “existential threat” to the Jewish state which should be stopped before Iranian scientists manage to produce a nuclear bomb. There is particular concern because of statements by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, threatening to wipe Israel from the map. But Israeli and western experts say that even without the firebrand Mr Ahmadinejad, who is currently in political difficulties, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, has made it clear that the Iranians will not back down from their confrontation with the West over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Read more at the Independent