Martin Dempsey, chairman of US Jt Chiefs
Two great reports re an attack on Iran leave the question, Who wants an attack on Iran?
First, Gareth Porter reports at IPS that the U.S. wants no part of it:
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.
Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.
And The Independent reports that Israel wants no part of it:
Almost the entire senior hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is worried about a premature attack on Iran and apprehensive about the possible repercussions, a former chief of the country’s defence forces told The Independent yesterday….
General Lipkin-Shahak stressed that Iran with a nuclear arsenal would be a hugely destabilising factor in the region. But, he said: “It is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] leadership do not support military action at this point.”
Lipkin-Shahak is a dove in Israeli terms. Notice that this report directly contradicts Ethan Bronner’s frontpage story in the Times that Iran would take an attack lying down.
Where does this leave us? This means that there is a war party, both in Israel and the U.S., that is saber rattling (neocons using Bronner and Jeffrey Goldberg) to try and get the U.S. to attack Iran.
Exactly. There’s a huge difference between folks who feel good about risking a war with Iran and those that don’t. How big a difference? Ask the folks who might be killed in a war.
It does no one any good to conflate Israelis and American Jews in general with the much smaller faction that is beating the drums for war. Yet it happens here quite a bit.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB03Ak04.html
“Time to review the evidence. In roughly one month, no less than three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups will be sloshing around the American Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea; the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson and USS Enterprise, plus good ol’ French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. And yet one more Pacific-based US aircraft carrier can be swiftly dispatched.
Apart from this naval hajj of US aircraft carrier groups, the 40-year-old USS Ponce is being retrofitted into a special ops amphibious hub – to be dispatched to the American Gulf.
The Pentagon’s CENTCOM is fast upgrading the 14,000-kilogram Orwellian bunker-buster monster known as Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP), theoretically capable of taking out Iran’s underground nuclear installations.
A certain Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Project – one of those myriad revolving doors in Washington mixing politicians and military-complex types – wants to give Israel some 200 additional MOPs and three KC-135 aerial refueling tankers to “increase the credibility of a military strike” against Iran”
— Pepe Escobar
Just imagine, there is a war declared and nobody shows up!!!
Phil, it could be the “big money people” that General Wesley Clark spoke about back during his time in the spotlight.
I’m just saying, it could be if there is such a thing.
We could always make a collection to pay for parachutes and AK47s so the neocons can dropped into Iran. I’m sure they could raise the money for their own ammunition.