Claims that Israel plans to attack Iran soon are not credible, former US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley tweeted on Monday.
"The strategic costs, while not static, still outweigh the prospects of success," he wrote.
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The September Conundrum (premium)Crowley also noted that "the Arab Spring has sufficiently complicated Israel's strategic calculus that it is more likely to show restraint in the immediate term."
The former spokesman's comments come after senior ex-CIA officer Robert Baer told an LA radio show over that weekend that
Israel will probably attack Iran in September.While Baer didn’t reveal the sources behind his prediction, he referred to former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s warnings of an Israeli attack on Iran as “no bluff.”
Baer told the KPFK Radio on Tuesday recent comments made by Dagan that an Israeli attack on Iran could lead to a regional war, “tell us with near certainty that [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu is planning an attack, and in as much as I can guess when it’s going to be, it’s probably going to be in September, before a [UN General Assembly] vote on the Palestinian state.”
Netanyahu is “also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict – and in fact, there’s a warning order inside the Pentagon to prepare for conflict with Iran,” Baer said.