Israel Tells U.S. No Plan To Attack Iran

The Israeli president has told President Obama's Mideast envoy there is no military solution to the threat caused by Iran's nuclear program and talk of Israeli plans to attack nuclear facilities there are "unfounded."

Shimon Peres' office says he told visiting envoy George Mitchell Thursday that progress with Iran depended on international cooperation and exploring whether dialogue presented a real opportunity or if Tehran was just stalling.

Israel sees a nuclear Iran as the most serious threat to its existence. Iran's president has called for Israel's destruction, and Iran has tested long-range missiles that could strike Israel.

While not directly threatening Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel has kept the military option open.

Mitchell began a new round of diplomacy Wednesday aimed at bridging the growing divide between a right-wing Israeli government and a weak Palestinian leadership.

His first challenge was the series of meetings with a new Israeli government that is seemingly at odds with the Obama administration over the basic outlines for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Mitchell, on a weeklong regional tour, said on an earlier stop in Algeria on Tuesday that the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel is "the only way" to peace.

CBS News correspondent Robert Berger reports that the message Peres delivered to Mitchell was a different one to what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying on the matter.

Netanyahu has said Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, and insists the military option remains on the table.

Mitchell was to meet later Thursday with Netanyahu, who has not endorsed Palestinian statehood and has yet to unveil his government's policy on peace efforts. He was also to meet Netanyahu's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who has said pledges made by the previous Israeli administration to work for Palestinian independence are no longer relevant.

He met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak at his Tel Aviv home for a little over an hour on Wednesday evening. A statement from Barak's office said he told Mitchell it was "possible and necessary (for Israel and the U.S.) to coordinate and understand one another regarding all the current issues."

Promising a vigorous push for Israel-Palestinian peace, Mitchell made his first Mideast foray in January, just a week after Mr. Obama took office. He made a second visit with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton a month later.

Since then, a general election that strengthened hawks and the religious Jewish right put Netanyahu at the head of a governing alliance softened only slightly by the inclusion of Barak's battered Labor Party, beaten into fourth place in the election.

Berger reports that, in a first tangible blow to Israel's foreign relations over the hawkish nature of the new government, Egypt said Thursday that it would not deal with foreign minister Lieberman.

Lieberman fell from grace because he once said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could "go to hell," and that Egypt's Aswan dam should be bombed.

Mitchell did not speak on his arrival Wednesday.

On Friday he is scheduled to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank. Their government, headed by Abbas' Fatah movement, is in control only of the West Bank because their rivals in the militant Hamas group seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Efforts to reconcile those factions have so far failed, adding a serious obstacle to peace efforts.