'Israel and the US see eye-to-eye on Iran'

i24news

PublishedApril 02nd 2014

            

'Israel and the US see eye-to-eye on Iran'

Top US military official Dempsey, former VP Cheney voice similar support of Israel's suspicion over Iran

Israel and the United States share today an agreement about the threat that Iran poses to the region and how to deal with it, the top US military official said Tuesday after meeting with officials in Jerusalem.

"I think they are satisfied that we have the capability to use a military option if the Iranians choose to stray off the diplomatic path," Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Israeli officials. "I think they are satisfied we have the capability. I think they believe we will use it."

Despite past differences, Dempsey said Israel and the United States are closer now in their assessment of not only the threat Iran poses but also the US' willingness to act.

"Initially, the two clocks just weren’t spinning at the same rate. Our clocks are more harmonized than they were two years ago," Dempsey said. "There was no discussion, necessarily, of can we do it, or will we do it? They [Israeli officials] just wanted to know that we are maintaining and continuing to refine our military options," Dempsey said ad he was wrapping up a two-day visit to Israel, where he met with military and government officials.

In related news, former US Vice President Dick Cheney voiced his support for an Israeli military action against Iran over the weekend, during a closed-door keynote address at the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual spring meeting, daily Haaretz reported Wednesday.

In his speech, Cheney criticized US President Barack Obama's foreign policy and dismissed the seriousness of the negotiations between the P5+1 nations and Tehran over Iran's nuclear program.

"The bottom line is," Cheney said, "the United States' position in [the Middle East] is worse than at any time in my lifetime… It's reached the point where Israel and Egypt, [the United Arab] Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan are closer to one another - imagine that! - than any of them is to us."

Iran's new UN envoy under fire

US lawmakers said on Tuesday they were concerned about Iran's selection of a UN envoy linked to the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, and called on the Obama administration to do what it can to prevent him from taking up the post in New York.

"That really has got to be a serious question, as to whether or not the State Department gives ... a visa to him," Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters.

Iran's new ambassador to the United Nations is veteran diplomat Hamid Abutalebi, who is seen as a moderate.

But people said he was part of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, which occupied the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, although not among the group who captured and held the American hostages.

Reports of his ties to the crisis infuriated lawmakers.

"We shouldn't accept him. We should change our rules or laws if we have to so that somebody who is guilty of that kind of behavior should not be allowed in the United States of America," said Arizona Republican Senator John McCain.

Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk said he thought the administration should bar Abutalebi and that he would lobby other senators to back him.

Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz introduced legislation that would change US law to allow the country to bar someone who had "committed overt acts of war against the United States" from entering the country.

"This nomination is willfully, deliberately insulting and contemptuous," Cruz said in a speech in the Senate chamber.