News / Brèves Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente Panetta Worries Aloud about Israeli Preventive Strike on Iran 4 February 2012 In a conversation with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius published yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confided that he is most worried that Israel will attack Iran sometime between April and June of this year. While in Brussels attending a NATO summit, Panetta was barraged with questions about the Ignatius report, which was published in Thursday’s Washington Post, and he refused to say anything further. But a senior U.S. intelligence source filled out the picture, starting with the fact that during his visit to Washington last week, the head of the Israeli Mossad, Tamir Pardo, told Obama Administration officials and Congressional intelligence committee leaders that Israel is facing a narrow window of time, in which it could credibly attack Iran’s nuclear sites, because Iran is building hardened enrichment facilities out of the reach of Israeli weapons, short of nuclear bombs. In fact, speaking at the annual Davos World Economic Forum last month, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Iran was "drifting into an immunity zone," in which only the U.S. could knock out or severely damage Iran’s enrichment facilities. Borrowing a page from Lyndon LaRouche’s warnings about the danger of an imminent thermonuclear World War III, Ignatius wrote that Panetta and other American officials are deeply worried about the "Guns of Spring," a reference to the outbreak of World War I. According to the senior intelligence source, the Pardo secret trip to Washington was in direct response to the visit to Israel by General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who delivered a blunt warning to Israel not to take unilateral military action against Iran. The U.S. military has been at the forefront of all war avoidance efforts for the past year, and Pentagon sources report that Gen. Dempsey is much more adament against any kind of military action than his predecessor, Admiral Mike Mullen, who was replaced in September 2011.