McCain decries 'daylight' between Israel, US over Iran

JPost.com -- Just hours after meeting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said Tuesday there was "daylight" and "tension" between Jerusalem and Washington over the Iranian issue.

"There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat," McCain said at a Jerusalem press conference. "Unfortunately there clearly is some."McCain, The ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the head of a five member bi-partisan senate delegation touring the region.

McCain's comments came just two days after Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a CNN interview it would not be prudent for Israel to attack Iran at this point. He also said that Iran was a "rational" actor.

McCain took strong issue with Dempsey's appraisal of Iran as rational, saying that by pursuing nuclear weapons despite mounting international isolation, growing sanctions, and the "very real threat of conflict, it is hard to see this as rational behavior."

"Any regime with an abiding concern for its own security, self interest and self preservation would not engage in such deeply provocative conduct," McCain said.

His colleague Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was even blunter in his criticism of Dempsey.

"I admire General Dempsey," he said. "But I don't think it is helpful to say that Iran is a rational actor given their behavior." Anyone who denies the Holocaust, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done, and plotted to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington should not be considered rational, he said.

In reference to a spate of reports claiming that Washington was pressing Israel not to take action against Iran now, Graham said, "People are giving Israel a lot of advice here lately form America. I just want to tell our Israeli friends that my advice to you is never lose control of your destiny. Never allow a situation to develop that would destroy the Jewish state."

Graham referred to the current impasse with Iran as a "never again" moment.

McCain, acknowledging that he was not privy to the content of meetings White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon's held here over the weekend, said there was "significant tension on how to approach the whole issue"

McCain sided with Jerusalem in the debate between Israel and the US over whether the time to act against Iran was only when the Iranians made the political decision to assemble a bomb, as Washington seems to maintain, or before they could fortify all their nuclear installations against military attack, as Israel argues.

"There is no doubt that Iran has so far been undeterred on the path of acquiring nuclear weapons," McCain said. "So whether they actually make the decision or not, they are on the path by assembling the necessary components for a nuclear weapon, something that is unacceptable to us and must be stopped."

McCain said that Israel "probably is most capable at determining what the threats are to its national security," and that it was "unfortunate" for the US to try to convince Jerusalem otherwise.