Panetta: I Hope Army Chief Is Right on Iran
Leon Panetta, the U.S. defense secretary, said he hoped Israel’s top soldier was “correct” in assessing that the Iranian regime was rational.
“I would hope he’s correct and he knows something more that I do,” Panetta was quoted as saying Thursday by AFP, the French news service, during a visit to Chile.
Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the Israeli military chief of staff, said in a Haaretz interview this week that he believed Iran’s leadership was “rational” and that would lead it to consider the consequences of developing a nuclear weapon.
Panetta, like Gantz, said he did not know whether the Iranians had decided to go ahead and build a nuclear weapon.
“I do not have any specific information that indicates they have made any decision one way or another,” Panetta said.
He said he hoped “that because of the leadership of the United States, the international community and the leadership of Israel, they can make the right decision.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
