World powers including the United States and Britain have formally accepted an offer from Iran to resume negotiations over its nuclear programme, overriding warnings from Israel that it was tiring of diplomacy.
The move came after Iran signalled its willingness partially to revise its refusal to allow UN weapons inspectors to visit a secret military complexwhere it is accused of carrying out experiments on the military components of a nuclear weapon.
Despite deep international scepticism prompted by past experience, when Iran has been accused of using talks as diplomatic cover to advance its nuclear programme, Western politicians said they had no choice but to test Tehran's intentions at the negotiating table.
"It is time for Iran to choose a different path and to show the world that it wants a peaceful, negotiated solution to the nuclear issue," William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said. "It is for Iran to seize this opportunityand we urge it to do so. The onus will be on Iran to convince the international community that its nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful, by taking concrete actions."
The resumption of talks with the 'E3+3' – Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the US – after a hiatus of more than a year is unlikely to impress Israel, however, after Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's prime minister, used a two-day visit to Washington to declare that neither sanctions nor diplomacy were working.
Amid growing concern in Washington that Israel is preparing to launch unilateral military action against Iran's nuclear facilities within months, President Barack Obama met Mr Netanyahu on Monday to try to convince him to give the latest EU and US sanctions a chance.
But although he acknowledged a toughening in Mr Obama's language, including a more specific threat of US force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, the Israeli leader insisted on his country's right to defend itself.
In an impassioned speech before the pro- Israeli lobby AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Mr Netanyahu drew a comparison between the threat of a nuclear armed Iran and the Holocaust.
"Israel has patiently waited for the international community to resolve the issue," he told delegates. "We've waited for diplomacy; we've waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer. As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation."
In a sign of his unwillingness to leave the United States to protect Israel, he held up a copy of a letter from the US war department turning down arequest from Jewish leaders in 1944 to bomb Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp.
Leon Panetta on Tuesday told AIPAC that the US would take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if diplomacy failed.
“Military action is the last alternative when all else fails,” he said. “But make no mistake, when all else fails, we will act.”
Israel has concluded that it has a period of between six and nine months before the bulk of Iran's nuclear material is buried beyond the reach of its US-provided "bunker-busting" bombs.
With its superior firepower, the US air force would still be able to launch a successful strike once Israel's window of opportunity has closed but Israeli analysts suggest that Mr Netanyahu did not win the guarantees he sought from Mr Obama to be willing to wait that long.
According to defence sources, Israeli military planners have also concluded that the timing of a unilateral strike is auspicious after Iran's ability to strike back was reduced by turmoil in Syria, Tehran's chief ally, and a decision by the Palestinian militant group Hamas to realign itself with Egypt. Senior Hamas officials on Tuesday told the Guardian that the movement would not launch its rockets at Israel if asked to do so by Iran.
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