Bloomberg:An Israeli attack on Iran would be “destabilizing,” the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey, said. Bloomberg
By Katarzyna Klimasinska
An Israeli attack on Iran would be “destabilizing,” the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey, said.
“It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” Dempsey said in an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” scheduled to be broadcast tomorrow. The U.S. government is confident the Israelis “understand our concerns,” he said, according to an e-mailed transcript.
Amid U.S. concerns that Israel may initiate military action against Iran’s nuclear sites, the White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon begins a two-day visit to Israel today to discuss Iran and other issues, such as the turmoil in Syria. Iran has been under United Nations investigation since 2003 over suspected nuclear weapons work.
“A strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their long-term objectives,” Dempsey said of the Israelis. “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.”
Crude oil prices increased 4.8 percent in February on concern the tensions between Iran and Israel will lead to a military conflict that disrupts oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. Iran is OPEC’s second-biggest producer. Iranian officials have threatened to cut off the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of crude oil trade passes.
The UN Security Council has passed four sets of sanctions against nuclear officials and companies in Iran. UN nuclear inspectors will return to Tehran for a second time in a month for meetings with Iranian atomic officials Feb. 21-22.
Iranian Politics
Iran said this week it had installed 3,000 “new-generation” domestically made centrifuges at its main nuclear research reactor at Natanz in the center of the country, describing it as a “major” breakthrough. The U.S. has downplayed the news, with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland calling it “hyped” in order to boost nationalism.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government blames Iran for this week’s car bombings of Israeli diplomatic vehicles in New Delhi and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The attacks come after the deaths of several Iranian nuclear scientists, the most recent in a Jan. 11 car bombing in Tehran that Iran said Israel had orchestrated.
Dempsey said the economic sanctions imposed on Iran and international pressure are beginning to have an effect, without elaborating. The European Union agreed on Jan. 23 to ban any oil imports from Iran, and the U.S. denied access to its financial system for any foreign bank that conducts business with the Central Bank of Iran.
‘Rational Actor’
“We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor,” Dempsey said. “We also know, or we believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided” to make a nuclear weapon, he said. Iran says its enrichment of uranium is for making power while Israel says it’s aimed at making weapons.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called today for “tight, ratcheted up” sanctions against Iran to force the country to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
“I think there is consensus in most capitals of the world that Iran should not be allowed to turn into a nuclear military power,” Barak said at a press conference today in Tokyo at the end of a four-day visit.
North Korean Immunity
Military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities must be considered before the country achieves “the same kind of immunity as Kim Jong Il,” Barak said, referring to the deceased North Korean leader who defied international pressure to abandon a nuclear weapons program.
Iran wants direct talks on its nuclear program at the “earliest possibility,” the country’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, wrote in a Feb. 14 letter to European Union foreign policy head Catherine Ashton. Ashton and Secretary State Hillary Clinton, who met in Washington yesterday, welcomed the initiative.
The EU is due to ban Iranian oil imports starting in July. Swift, the global bank-transfer service, yesterday said it is prepared to impose sanctions against Iranian financial institutions once the EU sets out implementation rules.
Arming Syrian Opposition
Separately, Dempsey also told CNN it’s too early to arm the Syrian opposition, because it’s difficult to identify.
“I think intervening in Syria would be very difficult,” he said. Syria is “an arena right now for all of the various interests to play out. And what I mean by that is you’ve got great power involvement: Turkey clearly has an interest, a very important interest, Russia has a very important interest, Iran has an interest.”
An Iranian destroyer and supply ship docked in the Syrian port of Tartus yesterday to train Syria’s navy, after passing through the Suez Canal, Iran’s state-run Press TV reported today. It was only the second time Iranian ships entered the Mediterranean since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Iran supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is being urged to quit by the U.S. and allies after an 11-month crackdown on protests.
China and Russia vetoed a resolution at the UN Security Council earlier this month calling on Assad to step down in favor of an interim government. The UN estimates that more than 5,400 Syrians had died by the end of last year as Assad cracked down on protests that began in March, while Saudi Arabia says the death toll is at least 7,000.
Syrian security forces opened fire today in the Maza neighborhood of Damascus, where thousands had rallied for the funeral of civilians killed yesterday, and carried out arrests in the southern province of Daraa and the eastern town of Deir al-Zour, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Machine gun fire was heard in Aleppo, where the army is conducting sweeps. At least 31 people were killed yesterday, according to the observatory.
