Former Pentagon chief says he dismissed Netanyahu’s ‘dead wrong’ prediction on Iran war

Former Pentagon chief and CIA director Robert Gates says he rejected an assessment by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggesting that Iran’s government would rapidly collapse if subjected to military aggression.

Speaking on the CBS program Face the Nation on Sunday, Gates recalled a 2009 conversation with Netanyahu regarding the possible consequences of a military attack against Iran.

According to Gates, Netanyahu argued during the discussion that the Iranian establishment would "crumble at the first attack."

'You're dead wrong'

Gates said he strongly disagreed with the assessment and told the Israeli PM he was "dead wrong."

The former Pentagon chief said Netanyahu had underestimated "the resilience of the Iranians."

Gates also suggested that previous Israeli military operations directed at other targets might have influenced an "unrealistic position" regarding Iran’s likely response to military aggression.

He referred to the Israeli regime’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor and a 2007 attack on a Syrian nuclear facility.

According to Gates, those operations may have contributed to wrongful Israeli assumptions about how the Islamic Republic would react under military pressure.

The comments came as the two previous rounds of wholesale unprovoked aggression by the regime, which it waged against Iran together with the United States, fell far short of damaging the establishment, with targeted officials being soon replaced and the country efficiently retaliating and recovering the damage caused to its defensive infrastructure.

The first round, staged in June last year, witnessed Iran's Armed Forces unleash decisive and successful retaliatory strikes against sensitive and strategic American and Israeli targets across the region, prompting Tel Aviv to urge Washington to request a ceasefire just within 12 days.

The latest bout, launched from February 28 to April 7, faced the same fate, besides prompting the Islamic Republic to impose strict controls over the strategic Strait of Hormuz to cause momentous effects on global energy markets.

Numerous American officials and experts have now come to question the rationality of Washington's succumbing to Israeli pressure to join the latter round in light of the consequences it has carried.

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