Israel must leave time for Iran sanctions to work

UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday night urged Israel to refrain from a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program and said time should be given for sanctions, including new European Union measures today, to work.

Cameron told the annual dinner of the United Jewish Israel appeal that he had told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “now is not the time for Israel to resort to military action,” British newspaper The Telegraph reported.

“At the very moment when the regime faces unprecedented pressure and the people are on the streets, and when Iran’s only real ally in Syria is losing his grip on power, a foreign military strike is exactly the chance the regime would look for to unite his people against a foreign enemy. We shouldn’t give them that chance,” he said.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg Mondayapproved tighter sanctions on Iran and its finance, energy and transport industries in a bid to persuade the government to permit more scrutiny of its nuclear program. The ministers froze the assets of 34 Iranian entities to hinder the ability to raise funds for the program, which the US and European nations say is aimed at producing weapons. The measures follow an oil embargo and a central-bank asset freeze earlier this year.

"Iran is not just a threat to Israel. It is a threat to the world," Cameron said. "A negotiated settlement remains within Iran's grasp for now. But until they change course, we have a strategy of ever tougher sanctions," he added.

The measures taken by the EU, which complement US restrictions and are meant to close loopholes in existing European sanctions, come after talks on Iranian atomic activities yielded little progress and the Israeli government warned of a growing threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. The Islamic republic says its atomic program is for civilian purposes.