Mullen warns of unintended upshot of Iran war

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has warned of “unintended consequences” of military action against Iran.

“As I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action [against Iran],” Mullen told reporters on Monday.

He added that in his idea a combination of “diplomatic and economic” levers was the best possible approach to Iran’s nuclear issue.

“For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are, and ought to be, the levers first pulled.”

Under the allegation that Iran is a “threat” to its existence, Israel, the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, has on several occasions threatened to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities through military action.

The West, spearheaded by the US and Israel, accuse Iran of developing a military nuclear program.

Israel, the world’s sixth largest nuclear weapons power, however, maintains a policy, known as “nuclear ambiguity” and refuses to sign the NPT.

Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), rejects the allegations as politically motivated and says its nuclear work is totally peaceful and within the framework of the NPT.

Iran’s nuclear program was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution which toppled a US-backed monarch in Iran, Western companies working on Iran’s program refused to fulfill their obligations even though they had been paid in full.

Iran has also called for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction across the globe.