by Richard Baehr
Presumably when President Bill Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres just weeks before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at a time when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton's mind.
There is a bit of
difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to
Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the
State of Israel, and Israelis too while they are it. Iran's proxy
terror army of Hezbollah contributed their part on Wednesday, killing
two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank fire from
southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more
interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli
-- namely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It has been a
remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president delivered
his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the
course with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program,
overselling what has already been achieved, as well as what might be
achieved. He also threatened to veto new sanctions legislation that
might be passed by Congress, where some have called for tougher
sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck
between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing
such a measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians
from the negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction,
since one area in which the Iranians have shown remarkable consistency
has been in negotiating with European powers, or the now expanded
negotiating group for over 10 years, always without a satisfactory
outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as negotiating while
their nuclear program advances.
Fact checkers awarded Obama a bunch of "pinocchios"
for his latest effort, suggesting he was all but lying on the matter.
No, the Iranians have not dismantled any centrifuges (they have more
running than before), they have not removed any fissile material from
the country for safekeeping, they have not allowed inspections on
demand, they have not disabled their Arak heavy-water reactor, they
have not agreed to end any missile program they are working on for
delivery of a nuclear bomb.
"Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran," Obama said,
"where, for the first time in a decade, we've halted the progress of
its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material."
James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, begged to disagree:
"But has Iran's
stockpile shrunk? Under a deal concluded last November, Iran halted
work on the most dangerous material, 20 percent refined uranium.
However, Iran is still making lower-grade uranium. According to a
report from the International Atomic Energy Agency last November,
Iran's stockpiles of low-enriched uranium gas and 5 percent enriched
uranium were both growing. Also, the agency cautioned that their
figures only covered 'declared sites,' the nuclear facilities Iran has
publicly acknowledged and allowed to be inspected."
In the days after his
address to Congress, the president repeated his threats about vetoing
new sanctions legislation, when meeting with Democratic senators,
several of whom, along with a few Republican colleagues, had been
lobbied on the matter by Britain's visiting Prime Minister David
Cameron. The president upped the ante, accusing Democratic Senator
Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a leader in the attempt to pass new
sanctions, of not thinking long-term, but just trying to make his
donors (could Obama have meant Jewish donors?) happy.
The idea of a foreign
leader directly lobbying members of Congress on an issue like the
Iranian sanctions bill took on a new life when House Speaker John
Boehner invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on the
Iranian issue on February 11. The White House predictably blew its
lid, accusing Boehner of breaking established protocol for such an
invitation. (It should have been coordinated with the White House.) The
usual Obama water carriers like Jeffrey Goldberg were quick to
lambaste Netanyahu for stage managing the invitation so as to embarrass
Obama, and in the process threaten U.S.-Israel relations. As Joel
Pollak describes Goldberg's argument:
"In his most recent
Atlantic column, he claims, for example, that Obama worked 'in tandem'
with Netanyahu to promote sanctions on Iran: 'Netanyahu traveled the
world arguing for stringent sanctions, and Obama did much the same.'
"That is simply
factually untrue. Obama resisted Iran sanctions for months, defying
even a unanimous vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Not only was
Israel frustrated, and Congress, but Europe as well, which accused
Obama of re-inventing the wheel, resetting diplomacy that had started
under (gasp) George W. Bush.
"In fact, Obama pushed
the world towards a more lenient position on Iran, allowing nuclear
enrichment in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions."
And then there is this doozy:
"It is Netanyahu's job, Goldberg says, as 'the junior partner in the Israel-U.S. relationship,' to make concessions."
When it comes to
negotiating with Iran, Netanyahu does not sit at the table with the
Iranians, but Obama's representatives do. And it is U.S. negotiators
who have been making concessions month after month since the talks
began, in what appears to be a desperate attempt to salvage some deal
they can broadcast as having achieved a minimal set of objectives.
That objective has now been reduced to providing some minimum breakout
time for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability if they ditch the
deal. What will the West do in that time if Iran moves towards the
bomb? It is pretty clear, any military response from Obama is out of
the question.
The administration has
further demonstrated its unhappiness about Netanyahu's impudence in
scheming with Boehner, by announcing that neither the president nor his
secretary of state will meet with Netanyahu when he visits Washington,
a date now moved back three weeks to overlap his visit to the annual
American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The excuse,
couched in a diplomatic smokescreen, is that it would be improper for
the president to meet with a candidate for office abroad so close to
the time of that country's election. That would be equivalent to
electioneering and interference in the other country's race. Presumably
when President Bill Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres just weeks before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at
a time when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head
battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton's mind.
The Obama team may not
meet with Netanyahu when he visits, but an experienced Obama campaign
team from 2012 is now in Israel working to defeat Netanyahu. That, in
and of itself, is nothing new for Israeli elections. Experienced
American campaign teams have aided Israeli candidates from the Left
and Right in recent decades. What is new is that the current
anti-Netanyahu campaign includes a State Department funded group:
"U.S.-based activist
group OneVoice International has partnered with V15, an 'independent
grass-roots movement' in Israel that is actively opposing Netanyahu's
party in the upcoming elections, Haaretz reported on Monday. Former
national field director for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign Jeremy
Bird is also reportedly involved in the effort.
"OneVoice development
and grants officer Christina Taler said the group would be working with
V15 on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts but would not
engage in overtly partisan activities. She said OneVoice and V15 are
still formalizing the partnership."
Obama's team has gone
further to poison the waters for Netanyahu, planting a story in Haaretz
that the Mossad was opposed to new sanctions legislation, a charge
they publicly rebutted.
The Goldberg article
was designed to deliver a message that Israel has two important
objectives now -- to keep Iran from going nuclear (for which their
best hope of course is to count on Obama to do the job for them in
negotiations), and second, to keep American close and happy with
Israel's behavior. Netanyahu, according to Goldberg, is killing the
good vibes that presumably must have existed during the Obama years by
his recent behavior.
There is an alternative
interpretation for what is going on. Obama is really not terribly
bothered by a nuclear Iran. A bad deal that looks like it delays Iran's
entry to the nuclear club is therefore not a bad option. It also
allows Obama to check off one more box on his achievements list before
his formal request to have his likeness carved into Mount Rushmore.
Pakistan has a bomb. Israel has the bomb. Why not Iran, the leading
Shiite nation? Iran, after all, is now our strategic partner, fighting
with us to battle ISIS in Iraq.
The latest evidence
that Obama is now on the Iranian team is the New York Times editorial
calling for accepting that having Assad hang on in Syria is the least
bad result, so backing a non-ISIS Syrian rebel team is a bad idea. The
New York Times editorial page is little more than a conveyance tool for
White House messaging at this point, and so this is now clearly
Obama's posture. How can we fight alongside Iran in Iraq, but support a
side that is fighting Iran's ally Assad in Syria?
Meanwhile, Hezbollah is
stepping up its activities in the Golan. The Iranian goal appears to
be to establish a base in Syria where Israel can be targeted by the
Lebanese group, without getting an Israeli response in Lebanon itself.
What is clear is that Hezbollah and Iran have Israel in their sights.
If Iran gets the bomb, the retaliation options for Israel when
Hezbollah pressure is applied, will be much more limited. There is no
certainty that Iran subscribes to the mutually assured destruction
deterrence club.
But not to worry. Obama
will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought
Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare
man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who
stands for something, say a country's security, as Netanyahu does,
gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little
more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a
"selfie"?
Richard Baehr
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=11415
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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