Dempsey heads to Israel amid rising Iran fears - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Dempsey heads to Israel amid rising Iran fears

JERUSALEM — The military's top officer headed to Israel on Thursday at a time of mounting international anxiety over Iran's nuclear intentions and the possibility that the Jewish state might take military action to keep Tehran from building bombs.

The arrival of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, comes at a charged time when Israel has grown increasingly vocal about its impatience over the international community's failure to curb Iran's nuclear program through sanctions.

Israel, like the West, believes Iran is developing nuclear weapons technology. Iran says its program is intended for peaceful purposes.

In the past few weeks, the U.S. and Europe have moved to step up sanctions against Iran, a top Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a mysterious assassination, and Tehran has threatened to shut down a key channel for the world's oil supply.

The Israeli and U.S. militaries, meanwhile, have postponed large-scale war games, in part to avoid aggravating growing tensions between the international community and Iran over its nuclear program, Israeli defense officials said.

A former Israeli military intelligence chief stoked the growing jitters by contending Iran already has all the components to build a nuclear bomb.

"If the Iranians get together tonight and decide to secretly develop a bomb, then they have all the resources and components to do so," Amos Yadlin was quoted Thursday as telling the Maariv daily.

It was not clear whether Yadlin, who retired in November 2010, was referring to the mechanical elements of a bomb, or implying the Iranians have sufficient weapons-grade uranium, a critical ingredient for bombmaking.

Still, his remarks reflect the prevalent view in Israel that Iran is on the cusp of producing a bomb — a view at odds with the American assessment that Iran won't have bombmaking capabilities for years.

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be a threat to its survival, given Iran's repeated threats against Israel and its support for Arab militant groups. Israeli leaders have repeatedly called for military action against Iran if sanctions, the current strategy favored by the international community, fail to curb the nuclear program.

U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapira portrayed Dempsey's visit as part of the ongoing coordination between the two allies and a reflection of Washington's "unshakable commitment to Israel's security."

But looming large over all discussions is the threat of an Israeli military strike. Israeli analysts have speculated that in his meetings with Israeli military and political leaders, Dempsey will warn Israel against attacking Iran, fearing it would ignite a broad regional conflagration.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak denied that Dempsey would carry such a message — and added that Israel was "very far" from deciding whether to strike.

He did not give a timeline and said Iran has not started to actually make bombs because it feared that would draw harsher international sanctions and other actions against it.

But Israeli officials have in the past repeatedly questioned whether the international community will be able to agree on penalties forceful enough to pressure Iran.

In Washington, a senior State Department official insisted the sanctions have been effective, disputing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assessment to the contrary, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported.

The official said the sanctions were gradual to avoid a sudden jump in oil prices but could be ramped up to include an embargo on Iran's central bank.

Netanyahu had told lawmakers earlier this week that "the current sanctions have harmed the Iranians but not in a way that would stop their nuclear program."

Israel has attacked nuclear sites in foreign countries before. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor. In 2007, Israeli aircraft destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed to be a secretly built nuclear reactor.

An assault on the Iranian program would be more complicated because facilities are scattered and some are located in fortified underground bunkers.

Israeli leaders say they hope economic and diplomatic sanctions will pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But they don't rule out a military strike as a last resort.

In an interview with Time magazine published in excerpt on Wednesday, President Obama took a similar line, saying, "We don't take any options off the table in preventing (Iran) from getting a nuclear weapon."

At the Pentagon on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. military was "fully prepared" to deal with any Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to close the strategic waterway, the route for about one-sixth of the global oil flow, because of new U.S. sanctions.