Breaking ranks with the Obama administration, the Netanyahu government told a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Wednesday that it will not go along with a proposed conference to discuss turning the Middle East into a nuclear weapons-free zone. The international parley was tentatively scheduled for early 2013 and to the surprise and chagrin of Israel, had the backing of the US government. While Israel is universally believed to have nuclear weapons, its policy of nuclear ambiguity is the backbone of its defense strategy and has been protected by all American administrations since it first obtained nuclear power. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first endorsed the Arab initiative — albeit in theory and with the caveat that the time was not ripe — Israel’s defense echelon was shocked and angered. President Obama himself promised to endorse the concept as early as 2010. In Vienna this week, Israel’s representative to the IAEA conference told the assemblage that the “volatile and hostile” situation in the region at the present time makes the idea even less appropriate. Brig. Gen. (Res.) Shaul Horev, director of the Israeli Nuclear Energy Committee, said, “Nuclear demilitarization in the Middle East, according to the Israeli position, will be possible only after the establishment of peace and trust among the states of the area, as a result of a local initiative, not of external coercion.”