WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department dismissed an ABC News report that Israel is increasingly likely to attack Iranian nuclear facilities this year.

“I have no information that would substantiate that,” a spokesman, Tom Casey, said.

ABC cited an unnamed Pentagon official as saying an Israeli strike might be triggered by the production of enough enriched uranium at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant to make a bomb. A second possible trigger would be the delivery of a Russian SA-20 air-defense system, the installation of which would make an Israeli attack more difficult, the official told ABC.

Some Pentagon military analysts believe the possibility that Israel could strike Iran by year’s end has increased and the ABC report reflects that assessment, two Defense Department officials told Bloomberg News on condition of anonymity.

Crude oil rose above $142 a barrel on concern any conflict would cut supplies from OPEC’s second-largest producer.

A spokesmen for the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House declined comment on the report as did Israeli government officials. Iran’s government dismissed it as propaganda.

A former Israeli Air Force general, Isaac Ben-Israel, now a lawmaker in Israel’s ruling Kadima party, told Germany’s Spiegel that his nation is “prepared” for an attack if diplomacy and U.N. sanctions fail to stop Iran from making a nuclear weapon. Mr. Ben-Israel helped plan Israel’s 1981 strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, the magazine said.

A strike on Natanz would only temporarily damage Iran’s nuclear program and could spark a wave of attacks on American interests, ABC said in Monday’s report, citing unidentified Pentagon officials. America and many of its allies have accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists its production of enriched uranium is intended to produce electricity and is legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Israeli government may want an attack to take place before President Bush leaves office, a deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Ephraim Kam, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“There is no doubt that such an operation is being considered, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow,” Mr. Kam said. “We still have some time. The Bush administration may be more sympathetic to an Israeli operation against Iran than whoever the next president may be, so it could happen before the end of the year.”

More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter planes took part in maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece during the first week of June, the New York Times reported on June 20.

A chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, was in Israel last weekend for meetings with Israeli military leaders, ABC said.