US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave the strongest indication yet, Thursday, that the Bush administration will not stand in the way of an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran's renegade nuclear program.

"We don't say yes or no to Israeli military operations. Israel is a sovereign country," Rice said in an interview with Yahoo! News. The secretary of state emphasized the importance of using diplomacy to defuse the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, even as the latest deadline for Iran to accept an EU-brokered incentives package passed without a response from Tehran. "We are in very close contact with the Israelis and we talk about the diplomatic track that we're on," Rice continued.

Earlier in the day, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the IDF is preparing for an "uncompromising" victory should Iran try to attack Israel. Speaking in an interview published Thursday in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Barak insisted that Israel needs to consider all scenarios in confronting the Iranian threat.

"We need to keep every option open," Barak told the paper. "If they provoke us, or they attack us, our army is prepared to attack and to succeed uncompromisingly."

"It's up to us to find the best way to get the best result with minimum damage," he added.

Meanwhile, the Israel Air Force's anti-aircraft division on Tuesday carried out one of the largest exercises to date testing its response to simultaneous missile strikes by Syria, Hizballah and Iran. The exercise began with a single Syrian missile strike on Israel and was swiftly followed by salvos of simulated missiles launched by Hizballah and Iran.