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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will push for "crippling sanctions" against Iran over its nuclear programme in Moscow on Monday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Israel, seeing a mortal threat, has hinted it could attack Iran's nuclear facilities pre-emptively if it deems international diplomacy a dead end. That possibility drew cautionary words from Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences of a strike," he told reporters during a visit to Tel Aviv, referring to Iran's threats to retaliate against Israel and U.S. sites in the Gulf. "I think the Iranians are very difficult to predict."

Asked what Netanyahu meant by "crippling sanctions," an aide said: "Sanctions that target Iran's refined petroleum imports." While it is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, Iran lacks domestic refineries and imports some 40 percent of its gasoline.

A key security operative of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was under arrest in Syria tonight on suspicion of having helped an alleged Israeli hit squad identify Mahmoud al-Mabhouh before he was assassinated in Dubai, the Guardian has learned.

Nahro Massoud, a Hamas security official, was in detention and under interrogation in Damascus in connection with the 19 January killing, which is now widely assumed to have been mounted by Israel's Mossad secret intelligence service.

Killings of Palestinians by Israel have often involved Palestinian agents being used to identity the target.

The TA-25 has now more than doubled since November 2008, when the global credit crisis was at its height. While the rebound on the Israeli exchange is in line with a general trend of recovery on bourses around the world, what sets Israel apart from its peers is the minimal effect the credit crunch had on the state's economy.

The still-booming hi-tech and pharmaceutical sectors also helped the Israeli economy ride out the storm, contributing to the reaching of the latest financial milestone being predicted by economists: a per capita GDP of $30,000, up from $20,000 less than a decade earlier.

pressure is now mounting on Netanyahu in his current incarnation as prime minister, with calls emanating from a variety of quarters urging him to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians for the sake of Israel's economy as much as Israeli society as a whole.Fischer believes the country could see growth of almost 7% per year if the conflict with the Palestinians was resolved, which – set against current levels of around 3% – provides a massive financial incentive to sign a final-status agreement. But far more pressing are the consequences of not reaching a lasting accord with the Palestinians in terms of the Iranian problem.

Iran test-fired its surface-to-surface Shahab-3 missile during 2009 exercises. It is thought to be capable of striking Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East.Washington has expressed concern about Tehran's missiles, which include the Shahab-3 strategic intermediate range ballistic missile with a range of up to 1,000 km (625 miles), the Ghadr-1 with an estimated 1,600 km range and a Shahab-3 variant known as Sajjil-2 with a range of up to 2,400 km

The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route for 40 percent of the world's oil shipment, is in Iran and Oman's territorial waters. However, under international maritime law it is considered as open to international navigation and shutting it down would we seen as an act of war.

At its narrowest point, it is 21 miles (34 km) across.

the Clinton administration entered office in 1993 and proceeded to adopt a strategy of "dual containment." Until that moment, the United States had acted as an "offshore balancer" in the Persian Gulf, and we had carefully refrained from deploying large air or ground force units there on a permanent basis. We had backed the Shah of Iran since the 1940s, and then switched sides and tilted toward Iraq during the 1980s. Our goal was to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, and we cleverly played competing powers off against each other for several decades. With dual containment, however, the United States had committed itself to containing two different countries -- Iran and Iraq -- who hated each other, which in turn forced us to keep lots of airplanes and troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did this, as both Kenneth Pollack and Trita Parsi have documented, because Israel wanted us to do it, and U.S. officials foolishly believed that doing so would make Israel more compliant during the Oslo peace process. But in addition to costing a lot more money, keeping U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the long term also fueled the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was deeply offended by the presence of "infidel" troops on Saudi territory, and so the foolish strategy of dual containment played no small role in causing our terrorism problem. It also helped derail several attempts to improve relations between the United States and Iran. Dual containment, in short, was a colossal blunder.

But no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse. And that is precisely what George W. Bush did after 9/11. Under the influence of neoconservatives who had opposed dual containment because they thought it didn't go far enough, Bush adopted a new strategy of "regional transformation." Instead of preserving a regional balance of power, or containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the United States was now going to use its military power to topple regimes across the Middle East and turn those countries into pro-American democracies. This was social engineering on a scale never seen before. The American public and the Congress were unenthusiastic, if not suspicious, about this grand enterprise, which forced the Bush administration to wage a massive deception campaign to get them on board for what was supposed to be the first step in this wildly ambitious scheme. The chicanery worked, and the United States launched its unnecessary war on Iraq in March 2003.

wrecking Iraq -- which is what we did -- destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and improved Iran's geopolitical position. The invasion of Iraq also diverted resources away from the war in Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to re-emerge as a formidable fighting force. Thus, Bush's decision to topple Saddam in 2003 led directly to two losing wars, not just one. And these wars were enormously expensive to boot. Combined with Bush's tax cuts and other fiscal irresponsibilities, this strategic incompetence caused the federal deficit to balloon to dangerous levels and helped bring about the fiscal impasse that we will be dealing with for years to come.

The survey commissioned by Maariv newspaper found only 19 percent of Israelis would support the go-it-alone strikes threatened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative government, while 26 percent thought military action should be taken - but only with U.S. backing.

Twenty-nine percent said the Jewish state should not attack at all, according to the poll, which asked what it should do if foreign sanctions do not deny Iran the means to make a nuclear bomb.

The findings were largely similar to those of a survey published in March before the United States and five other world powers relaunched negotiations to try and rein in Iranian uranium enrichment.

"I do not want the world to wake up to a conflict between Israel and Iran, because the international community has been incapable of acting," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview to CBS during his visit to the US to attend the Washington nuclear summit.

Sarkozy explained that the best way to prevent this "disaster" is to "take measures in order to get Israel to understand that we are determined to ensure its security."

He said the world powers were trying to bring about "the strongest, firmest possible sanctions" in the Security Council, but added, "If we don't - in other words, if we don't manage to get a majority of the Security Council, then the United States, Europe and others will have to shoulder our responsibilities."