A shot across the bow?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Some of us have been wondering if the Obama administration would continue to let the tail, Israel, continue to wag the dog, the US.  The NYT's Helene Cooper gives us some reason to believe maybe not so much.

Watchers of Middle East politics were quick to take note of a line in President Obama’s address before the Turkish Parliament on Monday in Ankara, in which he mentioned “Annapolis.”

By bringing up the word, Mr. Obama was sending a warning to the government of new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that reneging on the goals outlined during the Annapolis Middle East peace conference in 2007 would put Mr. Netanyahu on the wrong foot with the Obama administration.

The issue sprouted last week when Israel’s hawkish new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said that agreements reached at the American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., have “no validity.” Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament.”

Cooper thinks that Obama is trying to force Netanyahu's hand before the two meet.

By forcefully rebutting Mr. Lieberman’s repudiation of Annapolis, and in such a public fashion, Mr. Obama is issuing a warning to Mr. Netanyahu that the United States will push for a two-state solution, and will expect him to publicly articulate his own support for such an initiative, many experts said.

“At a minimum, Bibi will need to disown these statements and come out explicitly in support of the two-state solution before his meeting with President Obama,” said Ghaith Al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who now works with the American Task Force on Palestine. “If not,” Mr. Al-Omari said, “the issue will become the focus of the meeting.”

Also in the Times today Roger Cohen once again takes on Israel.  He reminds us that Israel has been telling the world that Iran will have a nuclear weapon within months for over 15 years.

“Iran is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option.”

Benjamin Netanyahu 2009? Try again. These words were in fact uttered by another Israeli prime minister (and now Israeli president), Shimon Peres, in 1996. Four years earlier, in 1992, he’d predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.

You can’t accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf. Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.

Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

Cohen rightly observes that this is nonsense and that Netanyahu  is simply trying to intimidate Obama fearing a policy shift on the part of Israel's only remaining ally.

This “messianic apocalyptic cult” in Tehran is, of course, the very same one with which Israel did business during the 1980’s, when its interest was in weakening Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That business — including sales of weapons and technology — was an extension of Israeli policy toward Iran under the shah.

It’s also the same “messianic apocalyptic cult” that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to “the axis of evil,” and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.

I don’t buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is “a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest.” Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.

Yet Netanyahu insists (too much) that Iran is “a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” Huh?

On that ocular theme again, Netanyahu says Iran’s “composite leadership” has “elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist in any other would-be nuclear power in the world.” No, they exist in an actual nuclear power, Pakistan.

Israel’s nuclear warheads, whose function is presumably deterrence of precisely powers like Iran, go unmentioned, of course.

[....]

What’s going on here? Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power, now overwhelmingly tilted in Jerusalem’s favor, by portraying Iran as a monstrous pariah state bent on imminent nuclear war.

A semblance of power balance is often the precondition for peace. Iran was left out of the Madrid and Oslo processes, with disastrous results. But that’s a discussion for another day.

What’s critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu’s fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time.

Michael Goldfarb of course disagrees. The AIPAC/necon crowd must be terrified that their lock on us policy may be coming to an end.  

 

Comments

[Peter G.]

While there is much in this analysis that makes sense I think you are overlooking some important nuances of Middle East politics if you think that the US is Israel's only ally in the region. Given the age old tensions between the Sunnis and the Shias there is considerable confluence of interest between the Saudis and the other gulf states and Israel. The Saudis may like to see Israel humbled to some degree but they certainly wouldn't want it to disappear. It is a useful counterweight to Iran's ambitions as a regional power.

[Hyperion]

you wrote: He reminds us that Israel has been telling the world that Iran will have a nuclear weapon within months for over 15 years.

Actually he reminds us that Netanyahu recently made some remarks that might include the "within months" claim. Cohen's writing is not clear on this point. The other claims (going back 15 years) were NOT about it happening "within months". So you are mis-stating what Cohen says. Please do not do this.

Analysis, good.
Distorting someone's remarks to make a snarky rhetorical point, bad.