The Mondoweiss website reports today (January 23, 2012) that Israel informed U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey -- during his visit to Israel over the weekend -- that it would not request U.S. authorization for an attack on Iran, and it would give only a 12-hour warning to the U.S. before launching such an attack.
According to a report in Britain's Sunday Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not trust President Obama and believes Obama might do everything in his power to prevent an Israeli attack if informed in advance.
The Sunday Times added that Israel and the U.S. are trying to downplay the crisis, but the two countries appear to be on a collision course.
For example, Dempsey claimed that Israel and the U.S. had recently agreed to postpone a scheduled joint military exercise; however, the fact is (according to an Israeli defense source) that Israel was shocked at the U.S. postponement, as "the exercise had been planned for two years."
