BREAKING NEWS

J'lem puzzled by Dempsey comment on Iran strike

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.