Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reviews Basij militia forces in Tehran in this Nov. 2007 file photo. He is flanked by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, right, and army commander Ataollah Salehi, left. (AP Photo, File)

(CNSNews.com) – Amid speculation over the reasons for delaying the largest-ever joint United States-Israel missile defense exercise, originally scheduled for the spring, senior Iranian officials appear to be relishing the international spotlight resulting from the regime’s belligerent actions and statements.

After reports cited unnamed military officials suggesting tensions between Washington and Jerusalem over how to deal with Iran, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued a brief statement Monday saying the aim of postponing the “Austere Challenge 12” drill until the second half of the year was “to allow for a better organized exercise.”

“For a month now, we have been in talks with the Pentagon about postponing the joint exercise,” he said. “The decision was made in coordination with the U.S.  We reached an understanding that it was right to postpone it to allow for a better organized exercise.”

The U.S. European Command-led multinational “Austere Challenge” drill was this year to be combined with the annual “Juniper Cobra” U.S.-Israel air defense exercise, bringing together thousands of U.S. and Israeli personnel and involving simulated missile attacks on Israel by hostile states.

Reports in Israeli and U.S. media earlier in the week gave conflicting reasons for the postponement.

Israeli officials told media there that the U.S. had requested the delay, to avoid escalating an already tense situation with Iran. But U.S. officials told U.S. media that the postponement request had come from Barak, amid suspicions that Israel may be edging closer towards a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio that regional tensions and instability were factors in the decision to postpone.

Some unnamed Israeli officials were also quoted early on as saying Israel wanted the delay due to budgetary constraints, although Jerusalem Post defense analyst Yaakov Katz called the claim “ridiculous since the drill was to be almost fully funded by the United States.”

“As a possible war with Iran looms on the horizon, canceling a missile defense drill meant to reassure Israel and instill confidence in Jerusalem was quite shocking,” Katz commented.

Last month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the now-postponed event as “the largest joint exercises in the history of that [U.S.-Israeli armed forces] partnership, enhancing the ability of our militaries to operate together and also testing our new ballistic missile and rocket defense capabilities.”

Speaking at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, Panetta cited the exercise as a sign of the Obama administration’s “unprecedented levels of defense cooperation with Israel to back up our unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

A month earlier, U.S. assistant secretary for political-military affairs Andrew Shapiro told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that the exercise would “involve more than 5,000 U.S and Israeli forces simulating the ballistic missile defense of Israel, making it by far the largest and the most significant exercise in U.S.-Israeli history.”

The postponement announcement comes just days before Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey is due to travel to Israel later this week, on his first visit since assuming the post in September.

Obama ‘feels threatened’

Recent weeks have seen tensions rise in the region, following a toughening of U.S. and European Union sanctions targeting Iran for its nuclear activities, threats by Iranian commanders to cut off oil shipments through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosure that Iran has begun to operate a well-defended new uranium enrichment facility near Qom, and the assassination of another Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran.

The temperature could rise still further next Monday, when E.U. foreign ministers are expected to agree on a measure banning the purchase of Iranian oil. Iran has already warned Arab producers not to step up crude supplies to world markets to make up for any shortfall caused by an embargo on Iranian oil.

The U.S. House of Representatives last month overwhelmingly passed sanctions legislation whose targets include Iran’s oil industry and central bank, and House Foreign Affairs Committee leaders are now urging the Senate to act speedily on the bill. Defense authorization legislation signed by President Obama on Dec. 31 included a provision requiring the administration to freeze any funds held by or for Iranian financial institutions in the U.S.

For all the anxiety generated by the standoff with Tehran, Iranian officials, politicians and pro-regime media outlets appear to be enjoying the attention.

News that Obama had quietly written a letter to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning against threats to the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, prompted a senior lawmaker, Esmail Kowsari, to say this demonstrated Iran’s might.

“When someone feels threatened, they react,” said Kowsari, deputy chairman of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister who advises the supreme leader, said dismissively that Obama’s letter contained “nothing new” and that Khamenei would not be replying, according to the ISNA news agency.

Also commenting on the letter, a military advisor to Khamenei, former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, told reporters, “If a danger is posed to Iran, we will use different political and other types of measures to defend our interests.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said earlier Obama’s letter, which he said had been received through three different channels – the U.S. mission to the U.N., the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, and the president of Iraq – was being studied and that the ministry would respond if necessary.

(White House press secretary Jay Carney  declined to comment on the “mechanisms” used to communicate the administration’s views to Tehran, but said they had been used “regularly on a range of issues over the years.” Obama reportedly sent two letters to Khamenei in 2009 exploring outreach possibilities. That same year the president, in a videotaped Persian new year message, offered Iran “a new beginning,” saying he sought “engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”)

Meanwhile Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani said Monday that actions by the U.S. and its allies were “nothing more than a propaganda show which aims to prevent Tehran’s inspiring role in ongoing Islamic Awakening in the Middle East and North Africa,” the state news agency IRNA reported.

Larijani described IAEA assertions on Iran as politically motivated, called the assassinations of nuclear scientists a sign of desperation on the part of the U.S. and Israel, and said Iran’s “enemies” would struggle to convince buyers of Iranian oil to stop.

“Iran is ready for any scenario including sanctions on its oil and it will use its own ways to confront the threats,” he was quoted as saying, adding “using Strait of Hormuz as a strategic tool to confront threats depends on the upcoming events.”