The Lede Blog: Images of New Clashes in Egypt, Two Years After the Revolution's 'Day of Rage'

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Last Updated, 2:02 p.m. As my colleague David Kirkpatrick reports from Egypt, there were protests in the Suez Canal city of Port Said and fresh clashes in Cairo on Monday.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday showed officers firing at protesters in Port Said, killing four, including a man in a wheelchair, according to Mosireen, a collective of activist Egyptian filmmakers.

Video said to show Egyptian police officers firing at protesters in the Suez Canal city of Port Said on Sunday.

As clashes continued in Port Said on Monday, despite a declaration of martial law, journalists and bloggers there uploaded video of angry chants against the government at funerals for protesters and reports of escalating mayhem.

Video said to show the funeral of protesters killed in Port Said, Egypt on Monday.

In Cairo, police fired tear gas on Sunday and Monday at protesters at the foot of the Kasr el-Nile bridge near Tahrir Square, which was the scene of an epic battle during the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak exactly two years ago, on what was known as the revolution’s “Day of Rage.”

The activist blogger Omar Kamel shared dramatic photographs and video of the clashes by the bridge on Sunday, showing clouds of tear gas in front of the luxury hotels along the Nile Corniche illuminated by the protesters’ fireworks and lasers.

Video of clashes along the Nile Corniche in Cairo on Sunday night, posted online by Omar Kamel, an activist filmmaker.

The Egyptian newspaper El Watan uploaded video of clashes in the same area on Monday.

Video on clashes in Cairo on Monday, from hte Egyptian news site El Watan.

The Cairene blogger who writes as Kikhote uploaded video shot from above Tahrir Square on Monday that zoomed in to the foot of the Kasr el-Nil bridge, showing the location of the bridge and what looked like hundreds of protesters gathered there.

Video shot from above Tahrir Square on Monday showed the location of clashes at Kasr el-Nil bridge nearby.

Kikhote also drew attention to the activist blogger Rasha Azab’s photograph of a cloud of tear gas in the air above the heads of protesters near the foot of the bridge on Monday, in front of the distinctive salmon-colored facade of the Cairo Semiramis hotel.

Tarek Shalaby, another activist blogger, reported on Twitter that a couple of hundred protesters remained on the bridge, with dozens of officers from the Central Security Forces on the Corniche nearby, at about 2 p.m. on Monday afternoon.

A short time later, my colleague Kareem Fahim reported from the bridge that tear gas was being fired at protesters on the Cornche.

At abut 5 p.m. local time, Jonathan Rashad, a photographer, reported on Twitter that the officers had pushed protesters back from the Cornche on to the bridge and into Tahrir Square.

About two hours later, the Egyptian journalists Mohamed Abdelfattah and Simon Hanna reported from the Corniche that a protest march coming from the other direction had broken through the police lines just down the street from the Semiramis, and, after some fighting, the protesters captured a senior officer outside another luxury hotel, the Kempinski.

Witnesses also said that the protesters then took control of one police armored personnel carrier, driving it to Tahrir Square, and set fire to another.

At about 8 p.m. local time the A.P.C. that was driven into Tahrir Square by protesters was also on fire, as video posted online by the blogger Kikhote showed.

Video of an armored personnel carrier ablaze in Tahrir Square on Monday night.

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Siemens picks banks for two disposals: sources

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Siemens AG has picked banks to organize the sale of two units as part of its efforts to streamline operations and stay competitive in a weak global economy, people familiar with the matter said.


Goldman Sachs Group Inc will advise the German conglomerate on the sale of its Water Technologies units, while Rothschild will oversee the divestment of its smaller security products arm, which makes access card readers and technology for intruder detection and surveillance, the sources said on Monday.






Siemens, Goldman and Rothschild all declined comment.


Siemens, which ranks as Germany’s second-most valuable company and which makes products ranging from trains to hearing aids, late last year announced the plan to divest several units in a bid to focus on its most profitable businesses.


It also aims to put itself in a better position to compete in core product areas with the likes of Switzerland’s ABB Ltd and U.S.-based General Electric Co.


Since then, several possible bidders for the water unit – which has annual sales of about 1 billion euros ($ 1.4 million) and employs 600 – have approached the Munich-based group and investment bankers have started to work on the possible sale, the sources said.


HATS IN THE RING


Siemens built up its water technology operations through a flurry of acquisitions over the last decade, buying the water systems and services division of U.S. Filter from Veolia Environnement for instance for $ 1 billion in 2004.


Since much of Siemens’s water business is focused on North America, industry sources expect U.S.-based peers Xylem Inc and Pentair Ltd to take a look at the asset.


“Asian companies are also likely to throw their hats into the ring,” one of the people said.


The region is experiencing rapid economic growth, climate change effects, rising populations and stricter energy and water regulations and is therefore expected to see heavy investment in water treatment equipment in coming years, he said.


Kurita Water Industries Ltd, Hyflux Ltd, Hitachi Ltd and Marubeni Corp are seen as possible suitors, he added.


Big private equity groups like KKR & Co LP, Bain and Permira are also expected to show interest.


Permira in 2011 bought Israel-based Netafim, a maker of irrigation technology, for 800 million euros.


Siemens Water Technologies offers products ranging from conventional water treatment to emergency water supply and water disinfection systems.


A report published in 2010 by Global Water Intelligence, an industry journal, put the size of the global water market at more than $ 500 billion.


Siemens shares were down 0.3 percent by 8.25 a.m, backtracking from a five-month high set last week, compared with a 0.1 percent drop in the main German index.


(Additional reporting by Jens Hack; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Downton Abbey's Dramatic Plot Turn: What Caused It?

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By Lesley Messer and Stephen M. Silverman





01/28/2013 at 01:20 PM EST







Downton Abbey season 3 cast


Carnival Film & Television/PBS


How seriously do TV viewers take what happens to the Crawleys and those in their sphere on Downton Abbey?

So seriously that, as the series' creator and writer Julian Fellowes recently admitted to PEOPLE, he even gets yelled at "a bit" by members of the public when something they dislike takes place on the show.

"And they know it all," the Oscar- and Emmy-winner, 63, said about the public's reaction. "They have opinions that are better than mine."

SPOILER ALERT: Details of Sunday's broadcast are about to be revealed.

Sunday, just as the cast was named TV's best ensemble at the 19th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, viewers got a tremendous jolt certain to elicit a potent response: Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) died as a result of childbirth.

The series' executive producer, Gareth Neame, 45, is trying to see this upheaval as some kind of an advantage.

"These exits can be good opportunities for the drama," he told PEOPLE, "because they allow you to take the story in a different direction and change things in a way you hadn't quite thought of.

And while admitting, "it can be seen as a blow when you lose characters," Neame also said, "it can very often be as much an opportunity as it is a loss."

Fellowes, meanwhile, believes that the public is sophisticated enough to know "that when Sybil dies or when [another character, whose identity is being concealed] dies, it is because the actor wanted to leave [the series]" – rather than anyone's dying just for the sake of the plot.

"So, however sad it is, and we're all sad, it isn't a question of anybody being killed off in that way," the writer insists. "They would both be in the series till the end of it, if it was up to us. "

As for argumentative viewers, he says, "They'll say, it's such a shame, it's such a shame ... but you don't so much get shouted out for being horrible."

With Sybil now departed, the dynamic of the sisters – Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) – is bound to change, both on screen and off.

"The three girls became very, very friendly," said Fellowes, who also said that season 4 will, like the current one, take place amid the social upheavals of the 1920s. "They were sort of like sisters, really, because they were always going about in each other's trailers and gossiping and all that stuff. I think they wanted to be like a group of sisters and they made it happen.

As it is, he said, the formidable cast makes the set is a "jolly" one, "and Maggie [Smith]'s sort of den mother, and I suppose Hugh [Bonneville, who plays Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham] is sort of the father of the show, but they all get on. Of course, it's lovely for the young ones to be in such a successful show, but the older ones have had a pretty good share of success, anyway."

• Additional Reporting By SIMON PERRY

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

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The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.


Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.


He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.


The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.


"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."


The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.


Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.


The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.


Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.


"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.


While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.


Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.


Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.


Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.


Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.


The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.


Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.


"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.


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AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.


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S&P 500 slips after rally, but Apple lifts Nasdaq

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 edged lower on Monday as a four-week rally stalled, while a rebound in Apple shares helped buoy the Nasdaq.


Caterpillar shares helped cap losses in the Dow industrials even as the company posted a 55 percent drop in quarterly profit due to a charge connected with accounting fraud at a Chinese subsidiary and weak demand among its dealers. Caterpillar's shares, down 2.2 percent in the past three sessions, rose 1.5 percent Monday to $96.97.


The S&P 500 is coming off a streak of eight sessions of gains, the longest in eight years. On Friday, the major U.S. stock indexes closed a fourth straight week of gains with the S&P 500 ending the session above 1,500 for the first time in more than five years.


The rally has left the market vulnerable to a short-term pullback of up to 3 percent in the S&P 500 as bullish sentiment continues to rise, according to Richard Ross, Auerbach Grayson's global technical strategist.


"Still," Ross said, "we have a lot of momentum and nice seasonality, and technicals support the long-term bull market."


Data on Monday pointed to growing economic momentum as companies sensed improved consumer demand.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 150 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 67.3 percent have beaten analysts' expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 9.02 points or 0.06 percent, to 13,886.96, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 1.5 points or 0.1 percent, to 1,501.46 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 8.46 points or 0.27 percent, to 3,158.17.


Bargain hunters lifted Apple after the tech giant's stock dropped 14.4 percent in the previous two sessions. With Apple's stock up 2.4 percent at $450.29, the iPad and iPhone maker regained the title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization as Exxon Mobil fell 0.9 percent to $90.94 and slipped back to second place.


"I think there is more downside in Apple if you did get a broad market pullback," Auerbach Grayson's Ross said.


"I'd be patient unless you're a trader. It might not be the most attractive entry point."


U.S. durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent in December, a pace that far outstripped expectations for a rise of 1.8 percent. Pending home sales unexpectedly dropped 4.3 percent. Analysts were looking for an increase of 0.3 percent.


Equities have also gained support from a recent agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power. On Monday, Fitch Ratings said that agreement removed the near-term risk to the country's 'AAA' rating.


Hess Corp shares shot up 5.3 percent to $62.02 after the company said it would exit its refining business, freeing up to $1 billion of capital. Separately, hedge fund Elliott Associates is looking for approval to buy about $800 million more in Hess stock.


Keryx Biopharmaceuticals Inc said a late-stage trial of its experimental kidney disease drug met the main study goal, and its shares soared 67 percent to $5.75.


(Editing by Jan Paschal and Nick Zieminski)



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The Lede Blog: Fire at a Nightclub in Southern Brazil

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Victims of the fire are attended by medics.

An intense fire ripped through a nightclub crowded with university students in southern Brazil early on Sunday morning, leaving behind a scene of horror with bodies piled in the club’s bathrooms and outside on the street.

At least 232 people were killed, many of them students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs in a local university, the police officials said.

As my colleague, Simon Romero reports, a flare from a live band’s pyrotechnic show ignited the fire in the nightclub, called Kiss, in the southern city of Santa Maria. Throughout the morning on Sunday, rescue workers hauled bodies from the still smoldering building.

Amateur videos posted to YouTube showed scenes of chaos as medics scurried over the bodies of apparently unconscious victims checking for signs of life.

Medics rush to care for victims of the fire.

Officials and witnesses now say that security guards at the club had locked some exits, sewing panic as people attempted to flee the flames and smoke.

“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” said Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, in comments posted on Facebook.

Shortly before the fire, a club D.J. posted a photo on Facebook from inside the crowded club with the caption: “Kiss is pumping.”

A short time later, another photo purportedly taken inside the club and widely disseminated through social media showed smoke billowing on the crowded dance floor.

The fire quickly engulfed the building.

Firefighters, apparently joined by volunteers who shielded their faces with T-shirts, struggled to pull people from the burning building.

Firefighters and volunteers tried to pull people from the burning building

Photos from the scene showed frantic friends and family members gathered outside the club and the hospital.

As Mr. Romero reports, witnesses said the fire started around 2 a.m. after a rock band, Gurizada Fangangueira, took the stage. At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics in its own publicity materials, was reportedly killed in the fire.

Overcrowding and a disregard for fire safety codes have led to deadly blazes at nightclubs in the past, though Sunday’s tragedy in Brazil is among the worst in recent history.

In 2003 in Rhode Island, a fire set off by a pyrotechnic display at a club killed about 100 people. A fire that erupted under similar circumstances in Russia left almost as many dead dead in 2009.

And in Luoyang, China in 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire that broke out at a dance hall, forcing some to leap from high-rise windows.

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Ailing Jennifer Lawrence Plans to Attend the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Say Sources

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By Alison Schwartz





01/27/2013 at 01:40 PM EST



Will Jennifer Lawrence walk the red carpet at Sunday night's Screen Actors Guild Awards?

The Silver Linings Playbook star, who's nominated for her leading role playing troubled girl-next-door Tiffany, is currently sick with pneumonia, according to her costar. But sources tell PEOPLE that Lawrence is planning to attend the SAG Awards unless she takes a turn for the worse before showtime.

"She's been very sick," says one source. "She was laying low all week. She plans to be there tonight."

The actress, 22, was unable to attend Saturday's Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts International Awards in Los Angeles, where she was honored for her work in the film.

"I'm going to receive this on her behalf," Jacki Weaver told the audience as she accepted Lawrence's best lead actress trophy, according to E! News. "Poor Jen is really sick. She really is sick. She has pneumonia."

After nabbing a Golden Globe earlier this month, the actress is a favorite to pick up the SAG Award.

The 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awardswill air live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 27, at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT) from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

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New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.


Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.


There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.


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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/


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Wall Street Week Ahead: Bears sleep as stocks near record highs

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks have been on a tear in January, moving major indexes within striking distance of all-time highs. The bearish case is a difficult one to make right now.


Earnings have exceeded expectations, the housing and labor markets have strengthened, lawmakers in Washington no longer seem to be the roadblock that they were for most of 2012, and money has returned to stock funds again.


The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> is up 5.4 percent this year and above 1,500 - climbing to the spot where Wall Street strategists expected it to be by mid-year. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> is just 2 percent away from all-time highs reached in October 2007. The Dow ended on Friday at 13,895.98, its highest close since October 31, 2007.


The S&P 500 has risen for four straight weeks and eight consecutive sessions, the longest streak of days since 2004. On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 ended at 1,502.96 - its first close above 1,500 in more than five years.


"Once we break above a resistance level at 1,510, we dramatically increase the probability that we break the highs of 2007," said Walter Zimmermann, a technical analyst at United-ICAP, in Jersey City, New Jersey. "That may be the start of a rise that could take equities near 1,800 within the next few years."


The most recent Reuters poll of Wall Street strategists estimated the benchmark index would rise to 1,550 by year's end, a target that is 3.1 percent away from current levels. That would put the S&P 500 a stone's throw from the index's all-time intraday high of 1,576.09 reached on October 11, 2007.


The new year has brought a sharp increase in flows into U.S. equity mutual funds, and that has helped stocks rack up four straight weeks of gains, with strength in big- and small-caps alike.


That's not to say there are no concerns. Economic growth has been steady, but not as strong as many had hoped. The household unemployment rate remains high at 7.8 percent. And more than 75 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 are above their 26-week highs, suggesting the buying has come too far, too fast.


MUTUAL FUND INVESTORS COME BACK


All 10 S&P 500 industry sectors are higher in 2013, in part because of new money flowing into equity funds. Investors in U.S.-based funds committed $3.66 billion to stock mutual funds in the latest week, the third straight week of big gains for the funds, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed on Thursday.


Energy shares <.5sp10> led the way with a gain of 6.6 percent, followed by industrials <.5sp20>, up 6.3 percent. Telecom <.5sp50>, a defensive play that underperforms in periods of growth, is the weakest sector - up 0.1 percent for the year.


More than 350 stocks hit new highs on Friday alone on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt> recently climbed to an all-time high, with stocks in this sector and other economic bellwethers posting strong gains almost daily.


"If you peel back the onion a little bit, you start to look at companies like Precision Castparts , Honeywell , 3M Co and Illinois Tool Works - these are big broad-based industrial companies in the United States and they are all hitting new highs, and doing very well. That is the real story," said Mike Binger, a portfolio manager at Gradient Investments, in Shoreview, Minnesota.


The gains have run across asset sizes as well. The S&P small-cap index <.spcy> has jumped 6.7 percent and the S&P mid-cap index <.mid> has shot up 7.5 percent so far this year.


Exchange-traded funds have seen year-to-date inflows of $15.6 billion, with fairly even flows across the small-, mid- and large-cap categories, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group, in New York.


"Investors aren't really differentiating among asset sizes. They just want broad equity exposure," Colas said.


The market has shown resilience to weak news. Last week, the S&P 500 held steady on Thursday despite a 12 percent slide in shares of Apple after the iPhone and iPad maker's results. The giant tech company is heavily weighted in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx>. In the past, Apple's drop has suffocated stocks' broader gains.


In the last few days, the ratio of stocks hitting new highs versus those hitting new lows on a daily basis has started to diminish - a sign that the rally is narrowing to fewer names - and could be running out of gas.


Investors have also cited sentiment surveys that indicate high levels of bullishness among newsletter writers, a contrarian indicator, and momentum indicators are starting to suggest the rally has perhaps come too far.


THE FED AND JOBS ON THE AGENDA


The Federal Reserve's policymakers will meet this week for the first time this year. The Federal Open Market Committee's meeting will start on Tuesday and end on Wednesday. Most economists polled in late January expect the Fed's ultra-loose monetary policy to stay in place well into next year despite the modest growth forecast for the U.S. economy.


The market's resilience could be tested this week with Friday's release of the January non-farm payrolls report. About 155,000 jobs are forecast to have been added in the month, a Reuters poll showed. The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.8 percent.


"Staying over 1,500 sends up a flag of profit taking," Jerry Harris, president of asset management at Sterne Agee, in Birmingham, Alabama, said in reference to the S&P 500. "Since recent jobless claims have made us optimistic on payrolls, if that doesn't come through, it will be a real risk to the rally."


A number of marquee names will report earnings this week, including bellwether companies such as Caterpillar Inc , Amazon.com Inc , Ford Motor Co and Pfizer Inc .


On a historic basis, valuations remain relatively low. The S&P 500's price-to-earnings ratio sits at 15.66, just a tad above the historic level of 15.


Worries about the U.S. stock market's recent strength do not mean the market is in a bubble. Investors clearly don't feel that way at the moment.


"We're seeing more interest in equities overall, and a lot of flows from bonds into stocks," said Paul Zemsky, who helps oversee $445 billion as the New York-based head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. "We've been increasing our exposure to risky assets."


For the past week, the Dow climbed 1.8 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.5 percent.


(Wall Street Week Ahead runs every Sunday. Questions or comments on this one can be sent to ryan.vlastelica(at)thomsonreuters.com)


(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)



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Defense Official Hints That Israel Is Stepping Back From Plans to Unilaterally Attack Iran

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JERUSALEM — Israel’s departing defense minister, Ehud Barak, said that the Pentagon had prepared sophisticated blueprints for a surgical operation to set back Iran’s nuclear program should the United States decide to attack, a statement that was a possible indication that Israel has shelved plans of any unilateral strike.







Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.








In an interview conducted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and published by The Daily Beast on Friday, Mr. Barak was asked if there was any way Israel could go to war with Iran over what the West believes is a nuclear weapons program without dragging in the war-weary United States.


Mr. Barak replied that there were more than just the two options — of full-scale war or allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capability — in the event that sanctions and diplomacy failed.


“What we basically say is that if worse comes to worst, there should be a readiness and an ability to launch a surgical operation that will delay them by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won’t work because the world is determined to block them,” he said.


Under orders from the White House, Mr. Barak added, “the Pentagon prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels,” referring to the ability to carry out pinpoint strikes.


Mr. Barak did not specify what those “scalpels” were. But there has been a broad effort at the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to develop an overlapping series of options that could set back, though probably not halt, Iran’s nuclear progress.


Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.


The Pentagon declined to comment on the report, but a senior defense official said: “The U.S. military constantly plans for a range of contingencies we might face around the world, and our planning is often quite detailed.” The official added, “That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.”


Mr. Barak and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, led a hawkish line against Iran’s nuclear drive over the past few years, emphasizing Israel’s doctrine of self-reliance for such existential issues and warning that the time to stop Iran from going nuclear was running out.


But in recent months, faced with tough opposition from Washington, particularly ahead of the November presidential elections, and public criticism from a string of Israeli former security chiefs, the prospect of an imminent unilateral Israeli strike receded. Israel suggested that its own deadline had been put off until this spring or summer.


In the past few weeks Mr. Netanyahu campaigned for re-election in Israel as a strong leader who, among other things, had managed to persuade the world to deal with the Iranian threat.


Late Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu said “the first challenge was and still is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”


But Mr. Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party emerged weakened from the elections, with much of the Israeli electorate more focused on domestic issues.


Mr. Barak chose not to run for re-election after polls showed that his tiny Independence faction was unlikely to pass the electoral threshold.


Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.



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