Further to my post last week about Adm. Mullen’s press conference, Anthony Cordesman, the Middle East military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has told an Israeli audience that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told his Israeli counterpart during his visit to Israel two weeks ago that the U.S. would not support an Israeli strike on Iran, according to an article that appeared in Tuesday’s Haaretz newspaper. (Scroll down to see the relevant part.) Moreover, according to Cordesman, Mullen was speaking on behalf of the president when he communicated that message. Cordesman, a heavyweight who once served as McCain’s national security advisor (back in the candidate’s realist days), is known as a very cautious, taciturn analyst whose words are chosen with great care, although, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he described the notion that it would result in the democratic transformation of the region as something that “crosses the line between neo-conservative and neo-crazy.”