Dempsey denies advising Israel against Iran strike

JPost -- Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey on Tuesday told a senate panel that he did not instruct Israel against an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Dempsey, who visited Israel for high-level talks in January, was answering the Senate panel's questions on comments he made about a possible Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic earlier this month. In an interview with CNN the US military chief had said that such an attack would be destabilizing.

“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,” he said in the CNN interview.

On Tuesday, Dempsey said that he had merely spoken to Israeli officials about "the issue of time," and not advised them against a military strike on Iran.

Dempsey also defended comments in which he described Iran as a "rational" actor. In his testimony before the Senate panel he stated that, "We can’t afford to underestimate our potential adversaries by writing them off as irrational.”

The US military chief's comments came as Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in the US, where he was scheduled to meet with US Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday. Iran was expected to play a prominent role in Barak's meetings with US officials.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was scheduled to visit Washington next week, where he will meet with US President Barack Obama. Netanyahu said at Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting that Iran would be the focus of his conversation with the US president.