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.
Dempsey, the chairman of
the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted last week as saying again that an
Israeli attack could delay, but not halt, Iran’s nuclear program.
“I
don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it,” Dempsey
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.