JERUSALEM - Israel has said that even if former Iran Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi wins Friday’s presidential elections, his country’s quest for being nuclear-armed will not diminish.

As more than 46.2 million eligible Iranian voters choose their president in elections on Friday, senior Israeli defense officials have stressed that the outcome is unlikely to have any impact on Teheran’s continued race toward nuclear power.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the consensus in the Israeli defense establishment is that the centrifuges in the underground bunker at Iran’s Natanz facility will continue spinning and enriching uranium.

Israel’s attention is not on the cost of bread and meat but on the future of Teheran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, the defense officials stressed.

For this reason, there are some in the defense establishment who are silently praying that despite Mousavi’s recent climb in the polls, Ahmadinejad wins Friday’s vote.

The concern in Israel is that the dialogue US President Barack Obama plans to hold with Iran after the elections will lead to a deal in which Teheran will be allowed to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

In some Israeli defense establishment circles this possibility is referred to as the “Japanese Model.”

Under such an agreement Iran would be allowed to build and operate nuclear reactors like Japan - which has reactors but no weapons.

This would put the Islamic republic a turn of the dial on the centrifuges and mere months away from an atomic bomb.

If Iran is offered such a deal, the assessment in Israel is that both front-runners will go for it, leaving Israel in something of a Catch-22 situation, since if it does nothing Iran will go nuclear, but if it decides to attack Teheran’s nuclear sites it will undermine Obama’s deal and ruin the already severely strained relations between Washington and Jerusalem. (ANI)