Israel can't play military card against Iran: think tank

Israel's top strategic think tank has held a closed-door war game which showed that Israel will fail to push US President Barack Obama into a war with Iran.

The November 1 war game at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) showed that Israel will find itself diplomatically sidelined and militarily muzzled as the United States pursues a nuclear deal with Iran next year.

According to the scenario, Iran will keep enriching uranium, perhaps even winning the assent of the West.

“The Iranians came out feeling better than the Americans, as they were simply more determined to stick to their objectives,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser who played Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the war game.

Reflecting Israel's relative isolation, Eiland and his team spent much of the simulation sequestered from the multilateral talks in the snug, three-storey INSS building.

“Our leverage over the Americans, when we could prise them away from the Iranians and Europeans and others, was limited,” Eiland told Reuters.

“Pretty much the only card we had to play was the military action card. And that's a faded card,” he added.