President Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said this morning that the United States military is developing the plans necessary for a military strike on Iran in the event that the Iranians try to buiild a nuclear weapon.
“My responsibility is to encourage the right degree of planning [for if Iran tries to build a nuclear bomb], to understand the risks associated with any kind of military option — in some cases to position assets, to provide those options in a timely fashion,” General Martin Dempsey said on Face the Nation today. “And all those activities are going on,” he added.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta agreed with Dempsey, saying that the Iranians “need to know that if they take that step [of trying to build a nuclear weapon] that they’re going to get stopped.”
Panetta also said that the United States military would end an Iranian blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. “They’ve invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a period of time block the Straits of Hormuz,” Panetta said. “But we would take action and reopen the Straits.”
