Top US general says Israeli strike on Iran would not work

The United States’ top military commander warned Israel off an attack on Iran Saturday, saying a strike would not be “prudent.”

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that he did not believe Iran was after nuclear weapons capability.

“We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor,” Dempsey said, adding that he did not believe they had decided to make a nuclear weapon.

The interview is scheduled to be aired Sunday on Zakaria’s GPS current affairs program.

Dempsey also said he believed an Israeli attack on Iran would fail to do what Jerusalem hopes.

“A strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their long-term objectives,” he said.

Tensions between Israel and Iran have ratcheted up over recent months as Israel has maintained Iran’s nuclear program is military in nature. Earlier this month, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Israel was prepared to strike in the spring

A series of attempted attacks on Israeli interests in Georgia, Thailand and India last week were tied to Tehran.

The US has maintained Israel give economic sanctions levied against the Islamic Republic time to work, and several factors point to a gap between Israeli and American understandings on how to deal with Iran.

On Thursday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said sanctions against the country were not working well enough. In the interview, Dempsey refutes that claim.

“I think that the economic sanctions and the international cooperation that we’ve been able to gather around sanctions is beginning to have an effect,” Dempsey said.