Jonathan neatly summed up the reasons behind the oh come on, dude sensation one gets from reading this morning’s Jeffrey Goldberg interview with President Obama. The discussion seems to take place in a universe where this White House hasn’t made an annual spring-time tradition of launching diplomatic offensives against Israel, bragging and chortling in the media about slapping Netanyahu around in 2009, declaring in 2010 that abandoning previous understandings on Jerusalem was “paying off”, trying to sandbag and isolate Netanyahu in 2011, and so on. It concludes with the president, at Goldberg’s prompting, insisting he “has Israel’s back,” which is a phrase you’ve read before on this blog in the context of Obama abandoning previous American assurances toward Israel.
But of the many surreal aspects of the conversation, the most grating is the president’s borderline-petulant insistence that Israel should take his security assurances on Iran seriously:
And one of the things that I like to remind them of is that every single commitment I have made to the state of Israel and its security, I have kept. I mean, part of your — not to put words in your mouth — but part of the underlying question is: Why is it that despite me never failing to support Israel on every single problem that they’ve had over the last three years, that there are still questions about that?
The somewhat nuanced, word-parsing answer to that question goes something like: it might be true the president has kept all the commitments that he specifically has made to the Israelis, of which there have been very few, but the problem is that he has abandoned wholesale the assurances made by previous administrations, undermining the faith that the Israelis (to say nothing of our other allies) have in American assurances as such.
But that’s just a reason why the Israelis don’t trust Obama’s assurances in general. There’s a much more specific reason why the Israelis can’t trust Obama’s assurances on Iran, which would stipulate that the United States will attack Iran if it hardens its nuclear program past the reach of Israel’s military. And that specific reason is that those assurances quite literally don’t exist. Via Newsweek from two weeks ago, Obama refuses to provide them:
Israeli officials say that the United States thinks it can afford to wait until Iran is on the very verge of weaponizing, because U.S. forces have the capacity to carry out multiple bombing sorties and cripple the Iranian program at that point. Israel, however, would not be able to carry out such a sustained attack and would need to hit much sooner to be effective—before Iran could shelter much of its program deep underground. One former Israeli official tells Newsweek… that Israel has asked Obama for assurances that if sanctions fail, he will use force against Iran. Obama’s refusal to provide that assurance has helped shape Israel’s posture: a refusal to promise restraint, or even to give the United States advance notice.
Thus we get the spectacle of the president of the United States complaining to one of America’s more serious journalists that a critical American ally won’t rely on assurances the president refuses to give.
BHO's delusions of grandeur are becoming increasingly more and more irrational (if they were ever rational). His actions are what we should look at;not his words. He says things such as, to paraphrase, that he has done more than any other president to increase energy supply here in the USA. What a liar! But the media go along! It is extremely frustrating to hear this man complain about Israel when he's the one that threw her under the bus!! The man is crazy. If the media are not going to be objective and hold BHO's feet to the fire, we are in more dire trouble than ever.
This is a typical—perhaps the archetypical—example of Obama’s foreign policy fumbling. First he goes out of his way to antagonize a key ally, behaving in a way that creates serious doubts in the mind of said ally concerning America’s reliability. When these doubts drive said ally to consider taking action (in this case an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure) that Obama would find inconvenient in an election year, Obama whines that nobody appreciates him. Well, I'm sure that our enemies do…
Well, if Israel really had a plan ready to launch it would have done so. So all of this is head fake theater all around.
besht2003 says:
March 2, 2012 at 3:34 pm
Well, if Israel really had a plan ready to launch it would have done so. So all of this is head fake theater all around.
I would respectfully disagree with this assertion. Israel probably has multiple plans for Iran with more options than one might imagine.
I believe that the upcoming US Presidential election is a major factor in the timing.
If I were Bibi, I would want to strike Iran when there was as large a political price possible for Obama not to follow through on The United States’ sworn commitment to Israel’s security. If Iran counter attacks from Lebanon and elsewhere in “the hood”, Obama may be inclined to sit on his hands and not even send an airlift, but, let me tell you, he will be cooking his own goose if he does.
I trust the Israelis to know precisely when that exact correct time will be. That will be it.
The greatest likelihood is a joint lightening strike on Iran’s Nuclear Project by many nations, with blessing from amongst others, Saudi Arabia. Do you think The Saudi fear Israel. Not a chance. They know who threatens The Arabs. If Obama balks, it will be a shoe in for Mr. Romney. Obama is an amateur. He should have never been elected President without having a long distinguished career in the senate. It points to the mechanisms for vetting and selecting potential candidates by the parties. Will they learn a lesson? Probably not, Obama won despite the overwhelming evidence it was an error. The worst humiliation is the percentage of Jewish Americans who voted for Obama. What a disgrace.
Let us be fair, no one takes Obama's promises seriously anymore. Obama has abandonded or betrayed all of America's allies while at the same time supporting or at least remaining harmless to all of America's enemies. nThe only difference in the Obama Doctrine of betraying America's allies is that Obama has a special antagonism towards Israel. Obama sees Israel as America's biggest and perhaps only problem in the Middle East. Thus he has distanced himself from the Jewish State and made it plain that his sympathies lie with Israel's enemies. nOddly enough, Obama seems to view Israel in much the same way he sees America. For Obama, Israel, like America, is a miltaristic, aggressive, and expansionist state which intimidates and preys upon it's neighbors. And Obama sees his foreign policy role as reining in both of these rogue states, Israel and the US. nBut Obama can only go so far since the Democratic Party, for purely political reasons, will not let him either demolish the Israel America alliance, nor so disarm and isolate America that the US no longer influences the global narrative.
You could add that when the Palestinians started making noises about a unilateral declaration of independence, Obama didn't do what even James Baker was willing to do: threaten a cutoff of aid before the effort gained any traction.
This is how I would sum it up if I were Netanyahu: Mr. President, if diplomacy is the answer… Well, your diplomacy hasn't convinced me not to bomb Iran and Israel is your ally. How do you propose to use diplomacy with the enemy nation of Iran to convince them?" n nStupid but astute
We talk about strategies and tactics for Israel's interests as if there's monolithic agreement on what those tactics should be. There isn't. Plenty of Israelis (including military officers, ex-security folks, etc.) believe that bombing Iran would be a disaster for Israel. Low grade security threats (garden-variety terrorism) would skyrocket and Iran would rebuild and have to be re-bombed periodically. Lastly, having nuclear weapons has not helped any country (including Israel) further its geopolitical goals since WWII. We need to re-evaluate what's really in Israel's best interests, and bombing Iran's nuclear facilities could well be the opposite.