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Answers to Questions about Iran, Israel, Bibi and Obama

(Atlantic) Jeffrey Goldberg - Q: Was Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey straying from the administration script when he said he doesn't want to appear to be "complicit" in an Israeli attack on Iran? A: I do think the use of the word "complicit," with its sinister air, was not the word the White House would want to see used, in part because it made the Israelis unnecessarily nervous. Martin Indyk, of the Brookings Institution, and formerly the American ambassador to Israel, wrote in an e-mail, "I don't think Dempsey was scripted. The White House would never have agreed to his use of the word 'complicit.'" (Indyk also argued that Netanyahu is "not going against the will of the President if only because the day after he pulls the trigger he's going to be calling Obama to help manage the aftermath. And by backing down he incurs an obligation from Obama even if he doesn't get the 'red line' declaration he is hoping for.") No one in the world has done more to focus attention on the dangers of Iran's nuclear program than Netanyahu, and I've met many people in the American government who are privately thankful he pushed the international community to its (relatively) strong position. As Nicholas Burns, the former undersecretary of state, told me recently, "Netanyahu has made the threat of force credible and that's not a bad thing for us. We don't want the Iranians to think we're paper tigers, and Netanyahu has played a useful role in this."
2012-09-05 00:00:00
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