Top US soldier: “I don’t want to be complicit” if Israel attacks Iran
DEBKAfile Special Report August 31, 2012,
But this time, talking to journalists in London, he added impatiently: “I don't want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it."
Sanctions against Iran were having an effect, he said, and they should be given a reasonable opportunity to succeed.
The general’s timing on this assertion was unfortunate. As he spoke, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported a 31-percent jump in Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium to 189.4 kilograms from 145 in May.
It was therefore obvious to the world that Iran has not been deflected by sanctions one whit from its gallop towards a nuclear weapon capacity, a race that will continue so long as nothing effective is done to stop – or even delay - its progress.
The mistimed Dempsey remarks, say DEBKAfile’s military sources, are the clearest sign yet that President Obama is fed up with hearing about Iran and its nuclear aspirations. He wants to be left alone to make his own judgments and decisions on the intelligence put before him – even though he might be too slow to stop Iran becoming a nuclear-armed power.
Israel, which is in direct line of an explicit Iranian threat of destruction, was therefore publicly slapped down by its best friend. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their predecessors were shown to have wasted three years in tireless efforts to solve the Iranian nuclear peril in accord with that friend. Washington has just dumped them.
The latest IAEA quarterly report published Thursday must have seriously embarrassed the Obama administration by making nonsense of its dependence on diplomacy and sanctions.The top US soldier may have been deployed for an authorative answer.
But Iran’s leaders must be laughing up their sleeves at America’s futile efforts to isolate them, as they race toward their nuclear goal while showcasing Tehran as the stage for the Non-Aligned Summit attended by dozens of world leaders.