Report: US expected Israel to strike Iran last spring
Former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said that the
United States "was convinced that Israel would attack" Iran's nuclear
program during the spring months earlier this year, speaking in an interview
with Army Radio on Thursday.
After no Israeli strike took place, Indyk said that the
US officials felt as though they had been duped by Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak's ruse.
The former ambassador added that there is a sense within
the US government that Washington is once again being misled by Israeli
declarations and leaks.
Indyk's comments come amid public discussions of the gaps
between Washington and Jerusalem's perspective on the Iranian nuclear program.
Earlier this week, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey highlighted the differences between the two allies:
"You can take two countries, give them the same intelligence and reach two
different conclusions. I think that's what’s happening here," he said on
Sunday.
Explaining why the Israelis saw Iran as a more pressing
issue Dempsey added, "at the same time, we admit that our clocks ticking
at different paces. We have to understand the Israelis; they live with a
constant suspicion with which we do not have to deal.”
A week earlier, former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit told
Channel Two that he did not trust American assurances that Washington would
stop Iran from going nuclear. Shavit said that Israel could only trust itself
when it came to its own fate.
On the same day as the Shavit interview, the Yediot
Aharonot daily carried a front-cover story saying that Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were seeking to launch a strike
against Iran this coming fall. The report claimed that the prime minister and
the defense minister were encountering stiff resistance to the idea of ordering
the strike now from military and intelligence chiefs.
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