Joint Chiefs Chair Martin Dempsey: 'We told him, he ignored us'
A couple of stunning admissions on the Iranian nuclear sellout in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday from Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
President Obama’s claim that Congress must either back his deal
with Iran or plan for war does not square with the advice he has
received from his top general, Senate lawmakers learned on Wednesday.
Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
never presented Obama with such a binary choice. “At no time did that
come up in our conversation nor did I make that comment,” Dempsey told
Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) during a Senate hearing on the Iran deal.
“I can tell you that we have a range of options and I always present
them.”
...
Dempsey also acknowledged that he advised the president not to
agree to the lifting of sanctions pertaining to Iran’s ballistic missile
program and other arms. “Yes, and I used the phrase ‘as long as
possible’ and then that was the point at which the negotiation continued
— but yes, that was my military advice,” he told Senator Kelly Ayotte
(R., N.H.). In the event the new deal goes into effect, the arms
embargoes will expire over the next several years.
Citing chapter and verse of the deal, Ayotte pointed out that the “plain
language” of the bargain requires the United States “to help strengthen
Iran’s ability to protect against sabotage of its nuclear program” —
even to the point of warning Iran if Israel tries to launch cyberattacks
against the program.
Dempsey seemed caught off guard when asked about that provision. “I
hadn’t thought about that, senator, and I would like to have the
opportunity to do so,” he told Ayotte.
That exchange came shortly after Dempsey and other administration
officials acknowledged a concern that Iran could launch cyberattacks
against the United States and even the International Atomic Energy
Agency, which is tasked with key oversight of the Islamic Republic’s
nuclear program under terms of the deal.
Brennan’s visit to Israel last Thursday had been planned long ahead
of time. However, it came at a sensitive diplomatic juncture, about a
month before the date set for a comprehensive agreement between Iran and
the six world powers on Iran’s nuclear program. It is unclear whether
Brennan conveyed a message about the agreement to Netanyahu from
President Barack Obama.
Israel and the U.S. are deeply divided over the
emerging agreement; Netanyahu has said publicly that he opposes it and
that he will try to stop it. Obama routinely rejects Netanyahu’s
criticism, including in an interview two weeks ago with Channel 2, in
which he said that the agreement was the best option to stop Iran from
attaining nuclear weapons.
In addition to the agreement with Iran, talks with
Brennan dealt with Iranian activities in the region in general.
Netanyahu has been warning in recent weeks of deepening Iranian
involvement in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as the increasing amount
of weapons Tehran is providing to Hezbollah. Netanyahu has also warned
of attempted Iranian terror attacks against Israeli targets abroad.
A few days before his secret visit to Israel,
Brennan told the CBS program Face the Nation that the diplomatic and
political tensions between Obama and Netanyahu are not harming
cooperation between the intelligence organizations of the two countries.
And Brennan is not the only guest.
On Monday, a few days after Brennan’s visit, the chairman of the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, landed in Israel. Dempsey,
who is the guest of Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot,
will also meet with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Like
Brennan’s visit, Dempsey’s is expected to deal mainly with the Iranian
issue.
There must be real fear in Washington that Israel can somehow stop this deal or blow it up by attacking Iran. Otherwise, you can bet that the Obama administration, which is in the fourth quarter of its existence, would not be going out of its way to placate Israel. Given that the US fears something Israel could do stop this deal, maybe we should stop talking and just do it?
Dempsey was asked about the ethical
implications of Israel's handling of the Gaza war, during an appearance
in New York at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
"I
actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to
limit collateral damage and civilian casualties," Dempsey told the
group.
"In this kind of conflict,
where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you're
going to be criticized for civilian casualties," he added.
Dempsey said Hamas had turned Gaza into "very nearly a subterranean society" with tunneling throughout the coastal enclave.
"That
caused the IDF some significant challenges. But they did some
extraordinary things to try and limit civilian casualties, to include
... making it known that they were going to destroy a particular
structure," Dempsey said.
He said
the IDF, in addition to dropping warning leaflets, developed a technique
called "roof-knocking" to advise residents to leave sites they planned
to strike.
...
Dempsey said the Pentagon three months ago
sent a "lessons-learned team" of senior officers and non-commissioned
officers to work with the IDF to see what could be learned from the Gaza
operation, "to include the measures they took to prevent civilian
casualties and what they did with tunneling."
The general said civilian casualties during the conflict were "tragic, but I think the IDF did what they could" to avoid them.
...
"The
IDF is not interested in creating civilian casualties. They're
interested in stopping the shooting of rockets and missiles out of the
Gaza Strip and into Israel," Dempsey said.
That's a very different tune than what's being sung by the Obama administration and the 'human rights' organizations, isn't it? Jonathan Tobin comments.
The contradiction between Dempsey’s remarks and the blistering
criticisms of Israeli behavior uttered by the State Department and White
House is instructive. Dempsey not only undermined the credibility of
anything said by the U.S. during the war. He also exposed the
president’s political agenda against the Jewish state and its
government, a point that was made clear in the recent controversy about
“senior administration officials” telling The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that Prime Minister Netanyahu was a “coward” and a “chickenshit.”
...
But the issue is not merely the falsity of the American carping about
Israeli actions. There’s little doubt the White House and the State
Department were well aware of the U.S. military’s opinion of what was
going on in Gaza or the fact that American actions ordered by Obama
produce much the same results.
The American military is right to seek to learn the lessons of Gaza
and to do what they can to emulate Israeli actions. But the real agenda
at play in Washington on this issue has been a concerted effort by the
Obama administration to undermine Israel’s right of self-defense in
order to weaken its ability to stand up to U.S. pressure. Seen in that
light, the real lesson to be culled from this episode is that everything
that comes out of the mouths of the president’s foreign-policy team
with respect to Israel should be considered false until proven
otherwise.
It's only going to get worse over the next two years....
It's important to try to defeat Chuck Hagel and John Brennan's nomination, but at the end of the day, I'm not convinced it matters. One person makes all the decisions in the White House (okay, maybe Michelle has a say too), so it doesn't really matter who is else is in charge. Case in point: The Syrian rebels.
In congressional testimony on Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta, who is retiring, and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both said they supported a plan last year by
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David
Petraeus to provide weapons to the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian
President Bashar Assad.
Their comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee came in
response to a question from Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona,
who has been a leading critic of the Obama administration for failing to
do more to help the Syrian rebels who are heavily outgunned by Assad’s
forces.
Their response to McCain’s question about whether they supported the Clinton-Petraeus plan was direct and terse.
“We do,” said Panetta. “We did,” said Dempsey.
That
means the White House was presented with unified support for sending
arms by the top members of Obama’s national security team outside the
White House staff.
Asked about disagreement over whether to arm the rebels, State
Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a briefing
today that she won’t comment on “internal policy discussions.”
Administration
officials, such as Nuland, have said that the US assistance to the
Syrians is limited to humanitarian aid and non-lethal equipment for the
rebels, while some other nations may be providing weapons.
The point of this post isn't to determine whether or not the US should arm the Syrian rebels. I have my doubts on that question as well, mainly because I don't believe it's possible to arm the rebels without arming al-Qaeda and other Islamists.
The point of this post is to tell you that - unsurprisingly given the size of his ego - there is only one decision maker in the White House and his middle name is Hussein. Oh - and he's not an expert in anything military or anything involving US national security. And he loves Muslims.
In the real America, the president is too busy to attend the security briefing on the morning after a national debacle, but he does have time to do Letterman and appear on a hip-hop radio show hosted by “The Pimp with a Limp.” In the real State Department, the U.S. embassy in Cairo is guarded by Marines with no ammunition, but they do enjoy the soft-power muscle of a Foreign Service officer, one Lloyd Schwartz, tweeting frenziedly into cyberspace (including a whole chain directed at my own Twitter handle, for some reason) about how America deplores insensitive people who are so insensitively insensitive that they don’t respectfully respect all religions equally respectfully and sensitively, even as the raging mob is pouring through the gates.
When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence. For example, we’re told that, because the consulate in Benghazi was designated as an “interim facility,” it did not warrant the level of security and protection that, say, an embassy in Scandinavia would have. This seems all too plausible — that security decisions are made not by individual human judgment but according to whichever rule-book sub-clause at the Federal Agency of Bureaucratic Facilities Regulation it happens to fall under. However, the very next day the embassy in Yemen, which is a permanent facility, was also overrun, as was the embassy in Tunisia the day after. Look, these are tough crowds, as the president might say at Caesar’s Palace. But we spend more money on these joints than anybody else, and they’re as easy to overrun as the Belgian consulate.
As I say, I’m inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and General Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the secretary of state’s weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the chairman of the joint chiefs’ telephone call to a private citizen asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.
Forget the free-speech arguments. In this case, as Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher’s teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: That’s not a spontaneous movie protest; that’s an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower’s response to it. Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.
One can understand why they might do this, given the fiasco in Libya. The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for ten hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.
For whatever reason, Secretary Clinton chose to double down on misleading the American people. “Libyans carried Chris’s body to the hospital,” said Mrs. Clinton. That’s one way of putting it. The photographs at the Arab TV network al-Mayadeen show Chris Stevens’s body being dragged through the streets, while the locals take souvenir photographs on their cell phones. A man in a red striped shirt photographs the dead-eyed ambassador from above; another immediately behind his head moves the splayed arm and holds his cell-phone camera an inch from the ambassador’s nose. Some years ago, I had occasion to assist in moving the body of a dead man: We did not stop to take photographs en route. Even allowing for cultural differences, this looks less like “carrying Chris’s body to the hospital” and more like barbarians gleefully feasting on the spoils of savagery.
Maybe the White House doesn't want to be 'complicit' in an Israeli attack on Iran either?
You will recall that at the end of last week, Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference in London that he did not want to be 'complicit' in an Israeli attack on Iran, a remark for which the Wall Street Journal slammed President Obama on Friday night.
A senior government official on Saturday characterized as “strange” a recent statement by US military chief Gen. Martin Dempsey that he would not want to be “complicit” in an Israeli attack on Iran.
“Dempsey’s comments are strange in that they would seem to contradict the continual statements from the White House that the security and defense cooperation between Israel and the US has never been as close,” the senior official said.
...
“These comments are also a bit strange, because they were said in a week when the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] released a report that seemed to confirm all of Israel’s concerns, and during a week where the international effort to isolate Iran and subject it to international pressure took a severe blow with the Non-Aligned Movement conference in Tehran,” the senior government official said.
Reading the whole thing might lead you to the conclusion that the 'senior government official' is Intelligence Minister, Dan Meridor, who is the most Leftist member of Israel's cabinet.
We need to stop fooling ourselves and take seriously the possibility - indeed the likelihood - that the Obama administration will do nothing about Iran, either before or after the elections, and that Dempsey's position is Obama's position. That should certainly be the case unless and until Obama explicitly disavows Dempsey's comments. So far, that has not happened.
White House spokesman Jay Carney – responding to comments made by US presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention in Florida on Thursday evening about Obama’s ineffectiveness in dealing with Iran – said that under Obama, “cooperation with Israel between our military and intelligence communities has never been closer, assistance provided to Israel by the United States has never been greater.”
For those who still wonder why Israel cannot trust President Obama, the Wall Street Journal explains yet again (full article for those without Journal access here; Hat Tip: Young Jewish Conservatives via Twitter).
Barack Obama is fond of insisting that he “has Israel’s back.” Maybe he should mention that to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
...
We don’t know what exactly Gen. Dempsey thinks American non-complicity might entail in the event of a strike. Should the Administration refuse to resupply Israel with jets and bombs, or condemn an Israeli strike at the U.N.? Nor do we know if the General was conducting freelance diplomacy or sending a signal from an Administration that feels the same way but doesn’t want to say so during a political season.
I'd say all of the above.
UPDATE 2:10 PM
There's actually more to this article than I saw or posted. The full version for those who do not have access to the Journal is here. This is spot-on.
No wonder the Israelis are upset—at the U.S. Administration. It’s one thing to hear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he wants to wipe you off the map: At least it has the ring of honesty. It’s quite another to hear from President Obama that he has your back, even as his Administration tries to sell to the public a make-believe world in which Iran’s nuclear intentions are potentially peaceful, sanctions are working and diplomacy hasn’t failed after three and half years.
The irony for the Administration is that its head-in-the-sand performance is why many Israeli decision-makers believe they had better strike sooner than later. Not only is there waning confidence that Mr. Obama is prepared to take military action on his own, but there’s also a fear that a re-elected President Obama will take a much harsher line on an Israeli attack than he would before the first Tuesday in November.
If Gen. Dempsey or Administration officials really wanted to avert an Israeli strike, they would seek to reassure Jerusalem that the U.S. is under no illusions about the mullahs’ nuclear goals—or about their proximity to achieving them. They’re doing the opposite.
Since coming to office, Obama Administration policy toward Israel has alternated between animus and incompetence. We don’t know what motivated Gen. Dempsey’s outburst, but a President who really had Israel’s back would publicly contradict it.
Distancing himself from any Israeli plan to bomb Iran, Dempsey said such an attack would "clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran's nuclear programme".
He added: "I don't want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it."
Dempsey said he did not know Iran's nuclear intentions, as intelligence did not reveal intentions. What was clear, he said, was that the "international coalition" applying pressure on Iran "could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely". Sanctions against Iran were having an effect, and they should be given a reasonable opportunity to succeed.
The sanctions are indeed having an effect on Iran, but it's not the one that the United States Congress intended. In the meantime, Dempsey's not wanting to be complicit indicates that the US will stand aside if there's an Israeli attack. I wonder whether that includes absorbing the inevitable Iranian attacks on US troops.
Here's the problem: Most of Israel is convinced that President Obama is more concerned with his own reelection than he is with this country's fate. So long as that is the case, he will not be able to stop Israel from taking unilateral action.
Truth no defense against Islamophobia charges in US Armed Forces: All training material to be reviewed to ensure no 'anti-Islamic' content
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has ordered a review of all military training materials after his subordinates discovered that material in an officer's training course states that 'Islam has already declared war on the West' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The extraordinary order by General Martin Dempsey, the highest-ranking military officer in the U.S. armed forces, was prompted by content in a course titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism” that was presented as an elective at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The course instructed captains, commanders, lieutenant colonels and colonels from across all four armed services that “Islam had already declared war on the West,” said Lt. Gen. George Flynn, Dempsey’s deputy for training and education.
“It was inflammatory,” Flynn told Danger Room on Tuesday. “We said, ‘Wait a second, that’s really not what we’re talking about.’ That is not how we view this problem or the challenges we have in the world today.”
The strong response by the Pentagon brass illustrates growing sensitivity around the issue since Danger Room’s investigation of anti-Islam material in the FBI’s counterterrorism training last September. That story sparked strong condemnation of the training material from the U.S. Attorney General on down, and prompted the White House to order a review of U.S. counterterrorism training last October.
Despite that White House order, the “Perspectives” course, taught since 2004, not only evaded review, but had defenders in the Joint Forces Staff College that taught it.
Danger Room first learned about the course last month, and determined that one of its guest lecturers was Stephen Coughlin, who has taught FBI and U.S. Army audiences that Islamic law is a danger to U.S. national security. We sought comment from a representative for the Joint Forces Staff College, who defended the propriety of the course.
Feedback from students has been “mostly positive, usually around the 90% range,” Steven Williams, a spokesman for the college, e-mailed Danger Room on Mar. 14. “Students generally appreciate thought-provoking discussion and the freedom to consider critical perspectives.”
I'll bet if you ask the radical Islamists they will tell you that their goal is to replace democracy with Sharia law and to force everyone to convert to Islam or pay the jizya. Then again, the Obama administration has decided that Sharia law is no danger to Western democracy either - even if it's imposed on all of us.
In preparation for Monday's Netanyahu-Obama meeting, Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff is walking back some of the 'advice' he gave Israel when he was here last week.
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey on Tuesday told a Senate panel that he did not instruct Israel against an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also speaking Tuesday on Capitol Hill, said that US President Barack Obama’s administration was working as “aggressively” as possible to implement sanctions on Iran, and that they had seen more progress than initially expected.
...
In an interview with CNN, he had said: “A strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their [Israel’s] long-term objectives. I wouldn’t suggest, sitting here today, that we’ve persuaded them that our view is the correct view and that they are acting in an ill-advised fashion.”
On Tuesday, Dempsey said that he had merely spoken to Israeli officials about “the issue of time,” and had not advised them against a military strike on Iran.
Dempsey also defended comments in which he described Iran as a “rational” actor, stating in his panel testimony, “We can’t afford to underestimate our potential adversaries by writing them off as irrational.”
Saying that Iran is irrational doesn't equate with underestimating them. In fact, the opposite is true. Categorizing Iran as irrational makes it more likely that it is willing to take undue risks to its own population in order to strike back at others. Saying that they are rational underestimates the possibility that Iran will attack.
McCain decries 'daylight' between Israel and US on Iran
Senators John McCain (R-Az) and Lindsey Graham (R-Fl) met with Prime Minister Netanyahu on Tuesday and came out decrying the 'daylight' between the US and Israel over Iran.
Just hours after meeting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said Tuesday there was "daylight" and "tension" between Jerusalem and Washington over the Iranian issue.
"There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat," McCain said at a Jerusalem press conference. "Unfortunately there clearly is some."
McCain's comments came just two days after Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a CNN interview it would not be prudent for Israel to attack Iran at this point. He also said that Iran was a "rational" actor.
McCain took strong issue with Dempsey's appraisal of Iran as rational, saying that by pursuing nuclear weapons despite mounting international isolation, growing sanctions, and the "very real threat of conflict, it is hard to see this as rational behavior."
"Any regime with an abiding concern for its own security, self interest and self preservation would not engage in such deeply provocative conduct," McCain said.
His colleague Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was even blunter in his criticism of Dempsey.
"I admire General Dempsey," he said. "But I don't think it is helpful to say that Iran is a rational actor given their behavior." Anyone who denies the Holocaust, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done, and plotted to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington should not be considered rational, he said.
In reference to a spate of reports claiming that Washington was pressing Israel not to take action against Iran now, Graham said, "People are giving Israel a lot of advice here lately form America. I just want to tell our Israeli friends that my advice to you is never lose control of your destiny. Never allow a situation to develop that would destroy the Jewish state."
Graham referred to the current impasse with Iran as a "never again" moment.
Here's US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey on the possibility of arming the opposition in Syria.
Let's go to the videotape.
On Monday morning, Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni said that Israel cannot sit silent and should come out in favor of the opposition. Sorry, but that's absurd. Support from Israel will only hurt the opposition, and even if it would help, should we really be helping an Islamist-led opposition that is likely to perpetrate a bloodbath if given the opportunity?
Egypt refuses to let Dempsey take detained Americans with him
During a visit earlier this month, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey attempted to obtain the release of 19 Americans being held in Egypt on charges of promoting democracy. Dempsey even attempted to take them with him on his private plane but to no avail.
"It appears that General Dempsey urged Egyptian officials he met to release the accused Americans and allow them to leave the country, so they may be tried in absentia," the Al-Ahram report said.
"The next day, the American request was even more persistent, with Dempsey saying he wanted to accompany the Americans on his private plane," said the report by a senior editor of the government's flagship newspaper.
Al-Ahram reported that the officials who met Dempsey told him the case was a judicial matter and only a court could lift the travel ban on the suspects.
After the meetings, Dempsey's spokesperson had said the general brought up the charges against the 19 Americans, workers with NGOs accused of receiving illicit foreign funding, but refused to elaborate on the discussions.
The prime suspect in the case is Sam LaHood, the son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He heads the Egyptian chapter of the International Republican Institute, one of the American NGOs implicated in the case.
Ray LaHood told US broadcaster CBS on Friday that "there are a lot of people in our government, really top officials in our government, working night and day to resolve this issue," according to CBS's website.
Interesting. This is the first time I have seen Sam Lahood called the 'prime suspect.'
Of course, neither Egypt’s military or even the Brotherhood is actually interested in reliving their country’s disastrous wars with Israel. But they do believe President Obama hasn’t the guts to stand up to them on any issue, including the role of Americans in promoting democracy. Just like the ayatollahs in Iran, they see this administration as being too weak to stand up to them. Though they neither wish to lose their annual billion-dollar bribe nor to have to revert to a state of war with Israel, they think Obama hasn’t the nerve to force them to back down.
Though it is a bit late in the day for him to be able to change his reputation, it is incumbent on Obama to prove the Brotherhood wrong. While neither the United States nor Israel wants an already shaky treaty to collapse altogether, it is the Egyptians who have the most to lose in this equation. The American demand must be backed up. If the Egyptians want any more U.S. taxpayer money, they must back off on their crackdown on those trying to promote democracy in that country.
Don't hold your breath. Obama is still the 98-pound weakling. He won't change.
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.
As President Obama gears up for his reelection campaign, he has sent a cadre of advisers and former advisers out to convince the public that he really would strike Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear-armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, said in an interview.
“There are consequences if you act militarily, and there’s big consequences if you don’t act,” said Ross, who in a two-hour interview at the Bloomberg Washington office laid out a detailed argument against those who say Obama would sooner “contain” a nuclear-armed Iran than strike militarily.
The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Ross, who last month rejoined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group.
His comments came the day after Obama’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line, precipitating a US strike.
“They need to know that if they take that step, they’re going to get stopped,” US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Jan. 8 on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” On the same program, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he has been responsible for planning and positioning assets to be ready if ordered to take military action.
Let's go to the videotape.
Iran had better not test a nuclear weapon before November 6, 2012. But after that.... What could go wrong?
Video: Joint Chiefs Chairman worries Iran will miscalculate, says sharing intelligence with Israel
Here's the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, who says that he worries that Iran will miscalculate regarding US resolve. Dempsey also says that the US is sharing intelligence on Iran with Israel.
Let's go to the videotape.
There would be much less danger of an Iranian miscalculation if the Obama administration were not sending mixed messages.
According to CNN, the Pentagon is pushing back against suggestions that Panetta has speeded up the US prediction of when Iran could have a nuclear weapon.
"Nothing has changed about the views he has expressed - repeatedly - of the concerns about where Iran is headed and about the approach the United States and the international community need to continue to take," Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby said Tuesday.
"I think what he meant in general was they could have the nuclear weapons capability in a year, I think was how he captured that," Kirby said. "We all recognize that is a difficult process - could be that fast, might not be that fast."
It sounds like the US is going to wait for Iran to develop nuclear weapons before attacking. And we've heard repeatedly that Obama and Panetta really don't want to attack.
The top US military officer told Reuters on Wednesday he did not know whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it decided to take military action against Iran.
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also acknowledged differences in perspective between the United States and Israel over the best way to handle Iran and its nuclear program.
He said the United States was convinced that sanctions and diplomatic pressure was the right path to take on Iran, along with "the stated intent not to take any options off the table" - language that leaves open the possibility of future military action.
"I'm not sure the Israelis share our assessment of that. And because they don't and because to them this is an existential threat, I think probably that it's fair to say that our expectations are different right now," Dempsey said in an interview as he flew to Washington from London.
Asked whether he was talking about the differences between Israeli and US expectations over sanctions, or differences in perspective about the future course of events, Dempsey said: "All of the above." He did not elaborate.
He also did not disclose whether he believed Israel was prepared to strike Iran.
...
The sanctions push got added momentum on Wednesday as diplomatic sources said Britain would support an embargo on Iranian oil imports. But Iran sees its nuclear program as a source of power and prestige and it is unclear whether sanctions will alter its cost-benefit analysis.
There has been concern that if world powers cannot nudge Iran into serious nuclear negotiations, then Israel, which feels threatened by Iranian nuclear aspirations, will attack.
Asked directly whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it chose to go forward with military action, Dempsey replied flatly: "I don't know.
A few comments.
If the US wants sanctions to work they have to get serious about them and quickly. That means cutting off all of Iran's oil imports and banning anyone who deals with Iran's central bank from dealing in the US financial markets. Until now, the Obama administration has been anything but serious about sanctions, with the last set of US sanctions - which include a Presidential national security exception - being forced down the President's throat by Representatives Howard Berman (D-Cal) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl). We'll never know if sanctions and diplomatic pressure are the right path to take until we take them seriously.
Second, it is unlikely that the Obama administration will be told anything about an Israeli attack until it is far enough along in progress that Obama cannot warn Iran (yes, we suspect he would do that) and cannot force or 'convince' Israel to turn back. When you turn your relationship with our Prime Minister into a personal vendetta (as Obama has done - contrary to all his claims that he's the best President for Israel evah), sometimes it comes back to bite you.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
