Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, seen here addressing a regional economic summit in Tehran in May 2011. JTA photo by ParmidaRahimi via Creative Commons. WASHINGTON— Israel, the United States and Iran have all gone deep into mixed-signals territory.

Conversations with Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, left one prominent journalist convinced that Israel will strike Iran by year’s end. Yet several weeks ago, Barak had said that any possible Israeli attack on Iran is “far off.”

Leon Panetta, the U.S. defense secretary, said in December that any military strike would only set Iran’s nuclear program back a couple years—a remark that some Israelis read as conveying a sense of resignation to the idea that if Iran really wants a nuclear weapon, eventually it will be able to get one. But in a television interview, he vowed that the U.S. would take “whatever steps are necessary” to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, Iran is responding to international sanctions with a mix of threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and efforts to placate Western concerns about its nuclear program by allowing in inspectors and calling for new talks.

Two questions remain the focus of considerable speculation: Will Israel strike Iran? And will the sanctions cause Iran to bend?

The first question was the subject of a much-discussed Sunday New York Times Magazine cover story by Ronen Bergman, one of Israel’s best-connected security journalists. It featured rare and extensive onthe record interviews with top Israeli officials, most prominently Barak.

Recent moves by the Iranians have underscored the significance of the second question.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was ready to sit down for talks to discuss its nuclear program. Iran allowed a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, to arrive in Tehran.

Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program has strictly civilian purposes. Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s foreign minister, was quoted by various media as saying that he was “optimistic” about the results of the inspectors’ visit.

Israel’s plans, meanwhile, also have been the subject of speculation.

Bergman in his New York Times Magazine article concluded that an Israeli strike before year’s end was all but inevitable.

“I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” he wrote. “Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that.” .