High Level Meeting Between US And Israel Defense Officials
By DoD News
By Jim Garamone
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff finished two days of meetings with U.S. and Israeli defense leaders Friday.
Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. met with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon.
“They have a unique perspective on the region — a unique perspective on the challenges we have in Syria, in particular,” Dunford said during an interview.
The chairman also wanted to hear about Exercise Juniper Cobra, a major U.S. European Command exercise that included 1,700 U.S. service members. The ballistic missile defense exercise used computer simulations to train U.S. and Israeli military personnel. The exercise has been held every other year since 2001, Eucom officials said.
Interoperability
The exercise “was to demonstrate interoperability, if not true integration,” Dunford said. “The feedback I had from the joint task force commander, [Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy M. Ray], … and the rest of the team is they felt pretty good about where they are.”
Dunford also discussed the situation in Iran. “There’s a message that … somehow the moderates have come out on top,” he said. “We discussed what does it really mean to be a moderate [in Iran], and how might this affect Iran’s behavior. And I don’t think anybody’s ready to draw any real conclusions about that.”
All of the candidates in the Iranian election were chosen by the current regime, the chairman noted. “So it would be hard to imagine that there’d be many candidates whose position was so wildly inconsistent with the current regime that they’d be elected,” he added.
Hezbollah
At the broader military-to-military level, the general discussed the way the threat is morphing in the region. Hezbollah is developing, and that worries many in the region. Hezbollah started as a terror organization, moved into guerrilla warfare, and “there’s now elements of increasingly sophisticated hybrid capability for Hezbollah, which obviously causes all of us to take a look at our own capabilities and capacities to deal with the challenge,” Dunford said.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is operating in the triangle of land inside Syria bounded by the triangle of land between Jordan, Syria and Israel. There is a presence of the terror group, Dunford said, but it has not aimed itself at Israel yet.
The Israeli side is telling our military leaders the guideline and the way to achieve the targets which are known to people. Our generals will submit the view to the politicians, and eventually the Israeli view will become a part of US national security. US will try to achieve the Israeli goals, and the Israeli leaders will watch the evolution of their strategy. They stay idle as usual. Basically, Israel does not worry about Daesh, because Daesh has never threatened Israel. Hezeb Allah is the target, because Israel has not been able to defeat it. In fact, Hezeb Allah was created after the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and was able to defeat Israel, as Daesh was created after the US occupation of Iraq. The basic point is that foreign occupation does create violence, and Independent Palestine will be one way to establish peace. I think USA needs to find different friends, because friends such as Turkey and Israel and the like will tarnish US image in the world.
Dear friend , you are smart and absolutely right. There is not such case to split countries as israel one hundred percent good and on the other hand iran one hundred percent bad. There should be a balance and even weigh in our judgements.