July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Joe Biden asserted Israel’s “sovereign right” to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and reiterated a U.S. offer to meet with the Tehran government over its suspected weapons program.

Israel “can determine for itself as a sovereign nation what is in its best interest,” Biden said in an interview with the ABC News program “This Week,” that was taped July 4 and aired yesterday. A U.S. offer to meet with Iran about its nuclear program remains “on the table,” Biden said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said May 18 after a White House meeting with President Barack Obama that a nuclear-armed Iran is “the worst danger we face.”

Protests in Iran over last month’s presidential election have put its nuclear ambitions in a new diplomatic light as the world waits to see whether the country’s ruling mullahs choose isolation or engagement with the U.S. and its allies, Biden said.

“We’re not rushing to sit down,” he added. “We need to wait to see how this sort of settles out.”

If Iranian leaders “seek to engage, we will engage” in talks, Biden said. If Iran responds by isolating itself, the U.S. has no standing to prevent Israel from taking action, he said.

“Israel can determine for itself as a sovereign nation what is in its best interest,” Biden said. “If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.”

Iran’s Response

A senior Iranian parliamentary official warned of “real and decisive” action if Israel launches a strike on its nuclear facilities, the Associated Press reported.

Alaeddin Broujerdi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, told reporters in Tokyo today that both the U.S. and Israel are “aware of the consequence” of such action, the AP reported.

Obama said Iran’s crackdown on opposition leaders wouldn’t prevent the U.S. from seeking direct negotiations with the Iranian regime, the New York Times reported on its Web site late yesterday.

In an interview with the newspaper before his departure yesterday for Moscow, Obama said the U.S. had “grave concerns” about the arrests and intimidation of opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the same time, the door remains open for talks, he said.

‘Security Interests’

“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Obama was cited as saying.

Obama said after his May 18 meeting with Netanyahu that “we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year” about the status of negotiations with Iran.

The U.S. leader hinted at an even shorter timeframe in his July 4 interview, the New York Times said.

“We will have to assess in coming weeks and months the degree to which they are willing to walk through that door,” the daily cited Obama as saying.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said separately that a military strike by any nation against Iran would be “destabilizing.” He also said a nuclear-armed Iran and military action against that country both “are really, really bad options.”

Military Strike

Mullen, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said he’s been saying “for some time” that a military strike against Iran would be “very destabilizing.”

“That said, I think it’s very important as we deal with Iran that we don’t take any options, including military options, off the table,” Mullen said.

Iran has defied three sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions demanding a halt to the enrichment of uranium, a key bomb-making ingredient. Iran denies western suspicions that it is pursuing a weapons capability, saying it wants to build power plants.

Iran has stepped up the pace of uranium production and continued to block attempts by international monitors to probe whether it’s secretly developing weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency said June 5.

Ahmadinejad won re-election in balloting June 12, leading to protests that the election was rigged against his challenger, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. Obama, at a news conference June 24, condemned Iran’s crackdown on protesters.

Iraq Pullout

On a separate issue, Biden said a violence-free pullout of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities is evidence that a more complete withdrawal of military personnel from the country by 2011 as negotiated by the Bush administration and Iraq is on schedule.

“We believe the Iraqis will be fully capable of maintaining their own security,” Biden said.

While in Iraq late last week, Biden said he told Iraqi leaders that the U.S. might disengage from their country if it reverts to sustained sectarian or ethnic violence.

Biden also said the U.S. was trying to react as little as possible to North Korea, which fired 11 short-range missiles over the weekend, including seven on July 4 in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

“I don’t want to give the attention, because, look, I think our policy has been absolutely correct so far,” Biden said. “We have succeeded in uniting the most important and critical countries to North Korea on a common path of further isolating North Korea.”

Mullen said it is difficult for the U.S. to tell “exactly what the North Korean leadership is up to.”

The U.S. is prepared in case the regime fires a missile at Hawaii, he said.

“We’ve worked our way through the missile defense readiness that we need right now, and I’m comfortable with the preparations that we’ve taken that we can defend our interests very specifically,” he said.

-- With assistance from Henry Meyer in Dubai. Editors: Robert Greene, Ed Johnson

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at rdonmoyer@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 6, 2009 02:19 EDT