The highest ranking officer in the United States military has announced that he is against American participation in any Israeli-led attack on Iran, even as pressure to destroy the Islamic Republic’s rumored nuclear program remain unrelieved.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in London on Thursday that an Israeli attack would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” adding that he was against US cooperation in a unilateral assault.
“I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it,” Dempsey told reporters.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been adamant that the nation’s nuclear facilities exist solely for peaceful purposes and that the country is not in the market for procuring nuclear warheads, a sentiment echoed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who earlier this week told heads of state, “Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none.”
So far, no foreign nations have been able to independently confirm or deny that claim. On Thursday, however, the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency wrote that Iran has been uncooperative with attempts to investigate their facilities and suggested that they could be procuring nukes.