LOC22:25
19:25 GMT
WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (KUNA) -- If diplomacy fails and Iran moves ahead to acquire a nuclear weapons program, "... that will be an unacceptable risk" to the US and the region, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey said in a taped interview released on Sunday.
"We have military capabilities in place, and we continue to keep them in readiness to, if asked, to eliminate -- delay is actually the right phrase -- Iran's nuclear program," Dempsey said.
In the wide-ranging interview on Fox News, Dempsey said a group such as ISIL -- "that embraces such a radical ideology -- has to maintain momentum in order to succeed, in order to maintain its credibility with the very people it is trying to influence."
Tactically, coalition airstrikes have destroyed a lot of ISIL equipment and reversed some of its territorial gains, he said.
"We have had an impact on their leadership, their command and control and logistics," he said. "What will eventually cause the defeat of ISIL is that it will collapse under its own contradictions, frankly, when the populations in which it tries to maneuver realize that ideology is not to their future benefit."
On Afghanistan, Dempsey said the US has "a very credible and cooperative partner in the new president and the new chief executive officer.
"We have got Afghan security forces who have demonstrated their willingness to stand and fight," he said. "I personally think there will be pockets inside of Afghanistan that change hands from time to time because that is the history of the country."
But he said he believes "we are in a very good place in Afghanistan" in terms of giving Afghans a chance to rebuild their country. "But we are going to have to keep an eye on it," he added.
Dempsey said he believes it is in US national interests to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "It (the prison) does create a psychological scar on our national values," he said. "Whether it should or not, it does."
But some of the Guantanamo detainees "simply should not be released," he said.
"We are going to come to a point, though, where we have got dozens of these individuals who just have to be detained, and we have got to figure that out," he added. Whether the prison remains open is "a policy decision," Dempsey said. But elected US officials "need to find a way to detain them," he said of those detainees deemed too dangerous to release.
Turning to the topic of Russia, Dempsey said the country "is on a very provocative and dangerous path."
In a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Valery Gerasimov, Dempsey said he told Gerasimov, "Valery, we began our careers 40 years ago facing off across the intra-German border, East Germany, West Germany. I said, you know, do not tell me we are going to do this again." (end)
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