Israel Matzav: Donilon comes to Israel to threaten, cajole, plead; Dempsey warns Israel

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Donilon comes to Israel to threaten, cajole, plead; Dempsey warns Israel

President Obama's National Security Adviser, Tom Donilon, arrives in Israel on Sunday in a bid to persuade the Jewish state to place its trust in Obama. Donilon joins a parade of American officials who have been here over the last few weeks.

The White House issued a statement saying Donilon will be in Israel from Saturday to Monday for consultations with senior officials about a range of issues, including “Iran, Syria and other regional security issues.” The statement said Donilon’s visit was the “latest in a series of regular, high-level consultations between the United States and Israel, consistent with our strong bilateral partnership and part of our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Israeli government officials did not provide any more details regarding the visit by the national security adviser, which, while not rare, is also not routine.

Donilon is the latest in a parade of high-level visitors to both country’s capitals in recent weeks, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Mossad head Tamir Pardo in Washington, and a visit here last month by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey.

In an interview to be broadcast in its entirety by CNN later on Sunday, Dempsey warned that an Israeli attack now 'would not accomplish its objectives.'

Let's go to the videotape.

Here's another one. Let's go to the videotape.

I'll try to post at least the Iranian part of the interview later Sunday. But here's some more from YNet.

The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey said Saturday that an Israeli strike on Iran "wouldn’t achieve its long-term objectives" and would be "destabilizing."

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Dempsey said that taking military action against the Islamic Republic would not be not "prudent."

The US general claimed that the economic sanctions imposed on Iran together with international pressure are beginning to have an effect. “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor. We also know, or we believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided to make a nuclear weapon."

In Israel, we don't view Iran as a rational actor. For the last five years, I've been explaining on this blog why Mutually Assured Destruction - a concept that was used to keep Russia at bay until Communism fell that I learned about in college - will not work with Iran. And the reaction of Iran's rulers thus far to sanctions shows that the Israeli view is right and the Obama administration's view is wrong. Obama and his minions don't understand ethnic conflict, they don't understand (or want to understand) irrational hatred of Jews, and they don't understand the difference between a competition between systems of government and the striving of an apocalyptic regime to impose its belief system on the world.

So while Israel will give sanctions as long as it possibly can to let them work, it won't give them forever. 70 years after the world and its Jews decided that one tyrant could not possibly mean that he wanted to murder World Jewry, the State of Israel will not make the same mistake.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Martin Dempsey, Tom Donilon