A senior Israeli official denied yesterday a newspaper report that President Barack Obama’s national security adviser had briefed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a US contingency plan to attack Iran should diplomacy fail to curb its nuclear programme.

The Israeli liberal Haaretz daily yesterday quoted an unnamed US official as saying the adviser, Thomas Donilon, had described the plan over dinner with Netanyahu earlier this month.

“Nothing in the article is correct. Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did he present operational plans to attack Iran,” the senior official, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters.

Haaretz said the briefing was the most significant effort by high-level US officials who had visited Israel in the past month, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to try to dissuade Israel from launching its own military strike on Iran.

The report coincided with a visit to Israel by Obama’s main rival in his re-election bid this November, Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Haaretz said Donilon had told Netanyahu the Pentagon was planning for a possible decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, and had shown him some of the plans.

On a visit to Jerusalem this month, Clinton said Israel and Washington were “on the same page” with respect to Iran, calling Iran’s latest proposals to world power talks on the issue “non starters”.

“Our own choice is clear, we will use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Clinton said.