According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, made the following statements about Iran during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria:

- “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” Dempsey said in [...]]]> Update: Both clips have been added to this post after the jump.

According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, made the following statements about Iran during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria:

- “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” Dempsey said in an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” scheduled to be broadcast today. The U.S. government is confident the Israelis “understand our concerns,” he said, according to an e-mailed transcript.

- “A strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their long-term objectives,” Dempsey said of the Israelis. “I wouldn’t suggest, sitting here today, that we’ve persuaded them that our view is the correct view and that they are acting in an ill-advised fashion.”

- “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor,” Dempsey said. “We also know, or we believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided” to make a nuclear weapon, he said.

Despite considerable criticism from pro-Israel commentators about his stance on Iran, Zakaria also spoke out again today against preemptive war with the Islamic Republic while comparing Israel’s Iran concerns with U.S. anxiety about the Soviet Union during the Cold War:

Israeli officials explain that we Americans cannot understand their fears, that Iran is an existential threat to them. But in fact we can understand because we have gone through a very similar experience ourselves. After World War II, as the Soviet Union approached a nuclear capability, the United States was seized by a panic that lasted for years.Everything that Israel says about Iran now, we said about the Soviet Union.

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The efforts to delay and disrupt Iran’s nuclear program are working. But even if one day Tehran manages to build a few crude bombs, a policy of robust containment and deterrence is better to contemplate than a preemptive war.

In recent months, we have had some strong views expressed, by people who have real knowledge of the situation, about the potential consequences of a military strike by Israel and/or the United States against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Former Mossad head Meir Dagan says  it is “The stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

The hawks on the American Enterprise Institute’s foreign policy team are usually quick to hype the threat of a nuclear Iran and warn anyone who will listen that a nuclear armed Iran would spell doomsday for Israel and regional stability in the Middle East. But Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

The hawks on the American Enterprise Institute’s foreign policy team are usually quick to hype the threat of a nuclear Iran and warn anyone who will listen that a nuclear armed Iran would spell doomsday for Israel and regional stability in the Middle East. But Danielle Pletka, the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI now says that the problem with a nuclear weapons possessing Iran is that the world might accept it as a responsible, nuclear weapons possessing state.

Pletka, speaking in an AEI promotional video, veers off-course from her usual talking point that a nuclear Iran would be uncontainable and hellbent on the destruction of Israel, saying:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it. It’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, ‘See! We told you Iran is a reponsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately. We told you Iran wasn’t seeking regional influence or regional hegemony through its acquisition of nuclear weapons. And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

Watch it:

“Hold on. The ‘biggest problem’ with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it but that they won’t use it and that they might behave like a ‘responsible power’?” Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg asks, adding, “But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust?”

Pletka’s new position — that the “biggest problem” is Iran possessing a nuclear weapon and not using it — is probably not going to be the talking point du jour at AEI’s December 6, event “The Costs of Containing Iran: More Than the U.S. Is Bargaining For.” But it will be interesting to see if Pletka uses the venue to clarify her position and reaffirm her hard-line stance against a nuclear Iran.

Foreign Policy: Despite the treasury’s letter to the Senate expressing “the Administration’s strong opposition” to the proposed Menendez-Kirk amendment to a new Iran sanctions bill, it was passed in senate on Thursday with a unanimous vote. Included [...]]]> News and views related to U.S.-Iran relations from Nov. 29 – Dec. 2

Foreign Policy: Despite the treasury’s letter to the Senate expressing “the Administration’s strong opposition” to the proposed Menendez-Kirk amendment to a new Iran sanctions bill, it was passed in senate on Thursday with a unanimous vote. Included in this post by Josh Rogin is a “best-guess timeline” of the implementation of the Kirk-Menendez sanctions. Robert Mendendez also expressed his anger yesterday over the Obama administration’s criticism of measures which he claims he was encouraged to make.

Huffington Post: According to Trita Parsi, the attack against the British embassy in Tehran was not only an explicit message from the Iranians that they will not respond positively to pressure. It also signals the rise of hardline conservatives in the government who see no boundaries in their quest to undermine President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

The attack on the British embassy was not only illegal and disgraceful, it was also a sign of how statecraft in Iran has deteriorated over the past years as a result of internal bickering within the political elite. Key actors within the regime are willing to be take excessive risks on the international stage through reckless actions in order to score points in their petty domestic rivalries.

TIME: The former director of Israel’s national security council, retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, tells an army radio station that the mysterious blast in Isfahan this week was “no accident”:

“There aren’t many coincidences,” he said,  ”and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it’s the hand of God.”

So given all those factors, with which many nonpartisan and military analysts agree, as well as concerns about an unintended slide from heated rhetoric to confrontation and war, why would a sober, thoughtful defense secretary go so far out of the way to insist that force is not ruled out?  Panetta said that the Administration’s goal is to force Iran to choose between a nuclear weapon and re-integration in the region and the world.  He knows that diplomacy and economics are the way to achieve that goal — and said so. The Secretary also knows that what he called Israel’s increasing isolation makes things easier for Iran.  Hence the invitation to Israel to reach out in its region and alter the dynamic. Panetta, who has developed since arriving at the Pentagon a reputation for speaking off the cuff from time to time, seemed highly calibrated throughout, which made the curtness of his last response, to the question of what Israel should do now, all the more striking: “just get to the damn table.”

Arms Control Association: The U.S. should make the “first move” to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran from becoming a reality since it is still not “imminent nor inevitable” and impose reasonable pressure while offering confidence-building measures:

Rather than being permanently discouraged by Iran’s unhelpful behavior at Istanbul, the United States and its “P5+1” partners—China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom—should prepare for additional talks with Iran and continue to highlight constructive proposals they are prepared to discuss. This includes outlining the confidence-building steps required to ease the current sanctions regime and end Tehran’s diplomatic isolation.

Al Jazeera English: A timeline of developments surrounding Iran’s nuclear program beginning in 2002.

In a report “The Iranian Issue through Economic Eyes,” Kahanovich laid out courses of action — ranging from additional “light sanctions” to military strikes [...]]]> Reuters informs us that a top Israeli brokerage firm has released a report concluding that the costs of attempting to eliminate Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions militarily outweigh the benefits:

In a report “The Iranian Issue through Economic Eyes,” Kahanovich laid out courses of action — ranging from additional “light sanctions” to military strikes — and told investors the world would likely balk at taking the steps needed to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Even for Israel the economic cost of a military confrontation that could include retaliatory missile attacks by Tehran and proxies in Gaza and Lebanon would be too high, Kahanovich wrote.

“Unfortunately, it appears that a nuclear Iran is the most reasonable scenario,” he added.

Chief economist Amir Kahanovich said the economic effects of going to war with Iran could be devastating for Israel and the world:

If Iran were backed into a corner it could take action, such as blocking the Strait of Hormuz, causing the price of oil to jump above $250 a barrel, the report said.

And the burden of funding a military confrontation would be too great with so many countries already hurting in the world economic crisis, it added.