"I am certain it is possible and certainly necessary to act with all our might to achieve peace even before I turn 70, which will be in three years," said Defense Minister Ehud Barak in his first extensive interview since joining the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"You have to understand that in their consciousness, the leaders are not so far apart in terms of what the final settlement will look like," Barak said, adding that he believes Netanyahu will present the U.S. administration a diplomatic plan in line with the principle of "two states for two nations" during his upcoming visit to Washington.

"Bibi [Netanyahu] accepted the Oslo accords at the time. And it is clear that when a political settlement is signed with all the neighbors, it will stipulate a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, with the two living side by side. I believe that even now, during Netanyahu's visit to Washington, Israel should come up with a formula about how it intends to move ahead, and that formula will not propose three states for eight nations," he said.
"Bibi has a hard choice to make: Does he want to be [Yitzhak] Shamir or [Menachem] Begin?" he asked. "There is deep understanding between us on the need to address the political issue, and that it is impossible to leave things in a state of paralysis. If we sink into paralysis, we may find the world losing interest in Israel and in this conflict - or, in an even worse scenario, acceptance by the world that the solution is not two states for two nations, but one state for two nations, which for us is a concrete risk, a slippery slope."

On Iran's nuclear program, Barak struck a blustery yet pragmatic tone. "There is no one who will dare try to destroy Israel. We are not in a position of being able to tell the Americans whether to talk to the Iranians. I told American leaders: First learn from the professionals about what is going on in Iran, what they are doing behind the smoke screen, acquaint yourselves with the intelligence material, and from this you will understand they are working determinedly to deceive, confuse and blur things, and that under the headline of 'nuclear power for peaceful purposes,' they are trying to achieve military nuclear capability.

"I told them negotiations should be short and have a deadline, accompanied by 'soft' sanctions such as limitations on money transfers, while preparing the ground for harsh sanctions that involve authorizing action afterward. This has to be done in deep cooperation with the Russians and the Chinese, and we say we are not removing any option from the table. We have a tendency to hope for a heroic operation that will end everything, as with the bombing of the Iraqi reactor in 1981. Is that realistic?

"There is no comparison," he said. "In the Iraqi case there was one target that existed and was working, and a surgical strike eliminated it. We thought we were delaying the project for three to four years, whereas in practice it was delayed forever. Here we are up against something far more complex, sophisticated and extensive."

"The Iranians don't play backgammon, they play chess, and in fact they invented the game. They are proceeding with far greater sophistication and are far more methodical. The Iranian nation is a collection of people held together by an identity that includes the perception of being an empire from the dawn of history. Part of their nuclear pretensions have nothing to do with Israel, but with their place in the world and the Orient."