Excerpt from NPR article by Mike Shuster:

"Dalia Dassa Kaye, a fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center and a specialist on Iran, doesn't think so. She argues it was part of Israeli preparedness.

'Israel clearly wants all the capabilities that are necessary to have a military option on the table,' Kaye says. 'They always want to show they can do it; but whether they really want to do it is an open question.'

...

Kaye also thinks this was a motive for President Obama's support.

'There are some in the Obama administration who may have expected to get more,' she says. 'Not that it was a direct linkage. But they may have expected that given the extensive defense cooperation that they have been engaged [in] with the Israelis, that would buy them some political leverage. And they no doubt were disappointed.' "

To view the original story, please visit the NPR website.

Please upgrade to a browser that supports HTML5 audio or install Flash.

Audio MP3 Download Podcast

Dalia-on-NPR-tf-5rq.mp3

Published: Friday, September 30, 2011