I cannot overstate the following truism about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, which would be farcical if it were not so dangerous:
Netanyahu will never miss an opportunity to undermine peace with Israel’s enemies — even if that means making enemies of Israel’s friends.
(“Israeli PM Accepts Mischief-Making Invitation to Address Congress,” The iPINIONS Journal, January 23, 2015)
Bear this in mind every time you hear him venting existential outrage over the negotiations President Obama is leading to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons … without resorting to war. In this case, Netanyahu seems hell-bent on goading Obama to do in Iran what he goaded President George W. Bush to do in Iraq. This, despite all indications that the folly of the former would make that of the latter seem trite….
That said, Obama announced on Thursday a truly “historic” framework agreement between Iran and the P5+1 world powers (namely, the United States, Russia, China, France, the UK + Germany). It promises to “cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon.” In substance:
Iran would reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% and significantly scale back its number of installed centrifuges… In exchange, the United States and the European Union would lift sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
(CNN, April 2, 2013)
Obama is getting near-universal praise for the comprehensive and detailed nature of this framework agreement. In fact, great expectations abound now that the parties will sign a final agreement in June against all (formerly intractable) odds.
Predictably, the only notable naysayers are members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition in the Israeli Knesset and members of the Israel-can-do-no-wrong caucus in the U.S. Congress:
Netanyahu seems to think Israel can get by with a little help from its friends — even if those friends comprise just a small faction of Christian fundamentalists and neo-cons within the U.S. Republican Party.
(“Netanyahu’s Call for Jewish Exodus more Sharpton than Moses,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 23, 2015)
Specifically, here is how the April 3 edition of the New York Times reported on Netanyahu’s visceral reaction:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel introduced a new demand Friday for the final phase of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, saying the completed deal must include an ‘unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel’s right to exist…’
‘Such a deal does not block Iran’s path to the bomb,’ he said, reprising language he used in his speech to Congress. ‘Such a deal paves Iran’s path to the bomb.’
In fact, with all due respect to the Times, not only is this language Orwellian doublespeak; Netanyahu has been reprising it in similar speeches since the early 1990s. What’s more, his well-documented chutzpah is such that he feels wholly entitled to make a public show of dictating terms for a deal that he/Israel is not even party to. And how’s this for contradiction/hypocrisy: He’s demanding Iran recognize Israel’s right to exist just weeks after he declared Israel would never recognize Palestine’s right to exist.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a final bid to shore up right-wing support ahead of a knife-edge vote on Tuesday, said he would not permit a Palestinian state to be created under his watch….
(Reuters, March 16, 2015)
More to the point, Netanyahu acts on the world stage as if he’s the president of the United States, not Obama. And, alas, far too many Obama-hating (racist) Republicans seem all too happy to enable his presumptuousness in this respect.
Meanwhile, both Netanyahu and Republicans seem willfully oblivious to the fact that no less a person than their political patron saint, former President Ronald Reagan, negotiated similar nuclear deals with the former Soviet Union — a country that not only vowed to wipe the United States off the map, but actually possessed the nuclear weapons to do so.
Anyway, by instructive contrast, here is how no less a newspaper than the April 3 edition of the Jerusalem Post reported on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s reassuringly constructive reaction:
With those countries with which we have a cold relationship we would like a better relationship…
We don’t cheat… If we’ve given a promise … we will take action based on that promise.
Which compels me to reprise this prescient assessment:
It may be that Rouhani’s predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, forfeited Iran’s sovereign right to possess nuclear weapons with his reckless rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map. Never mind that President Kim Jong-il did not forfeit North Korea’s sovereign right to possess them with his equally reckless rhetoric about wiping South Korea off the map.
The fact remains that Netanyahu has given Obama just cause to be far more wary of him than he quite properly is of Rouhani.
That said, my Israeli friends would never forgive me if I fail to point out that – just as Rouhani is demonstrating that not every Iranian president spews the reckless rhetoric Ahmadinejad spewed – other Israeli prime ministers have demonstrated that not every one of them has been as dogged in trying to goad American presidents into war as Netanyahu has been with Obama … and Bush.
(“Netanyahu, Obama’s Iago; Iran, His Desdemona,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 3, 2013)
But disabusing people of Netanyahu’s political schtick has become as pointless as disabusing them of Donald Trump’s. Put another way (with reference to another huckster of his ilk), I see no point in arguing anew the reasons why Netanyahu will have no greater success in getting Congress to torpedo this deal than Senator Ted Cruz had in getting it to repeal Obamacare.
Instead, here is an excerpt from “Republicans Send ‘Mutinous’ Letter to Iran,” March 17, 2015, which explains why criticisms of this deal are as baseless as they are reckless.
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I just wish someone in the “lamestream media” would have the journalistic balls to challenge Obama’s political detractors to explain why they think they’re more qualified to ensure Israel’s national security than:
- the Israeli defense ministers who are on record (as noted in my February 23 commentary above) declaring that Obama has done more to ensure Israel’s national security than any other president in U.S. history; and/or
- the 180 Israeli ex-military chiefs who held a news conference (as reported in the March 1 edition of the Washington Post) not only to denounce Netanyahu’s congressional address as a brazen strategic blunder, but also to support Obama’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
Beyond this, Obama’s detractors should be forced to explain if they think the leaders of Russia, China, Germany, France, and the UK are just as naïve, incompetent, and untrustworthy as they insist Obama is for negotiating this deal. After all, his detractors would have you believe that Obama is so desperate for a deal to seal his presidential legacy that he’d have no compunction about striking one even if it “threatens the survival of Israel”—as the eschatologically paranoid Netanyahu maintains.
Whereas, in fact, Obama is “leading from in front” by rallying these world leaders to endorse his strategy for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. This, ironically, is the kind of leadership that makes him finally worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize he won years ago.
Which raises these three (damningly rhetorical) questions:
- Do Netanyahu and his band of enablers in the U.S. Congress believe that Putin of Russia, Xi of China, Merkel of Germany, et al. are doing so just to ensure Obama’s presidential legacy … or to threaten Israel’s national survival?!
- What makes Netanyahu and his band of enablers in the U.S. Congress think that they can torpedo this deal and then get these world leaders to endorsed their ill-fated plan to either sanction or bomb Iran into oblivion?
- Why was it okay for Reagan to negotiate nuclear deals with the Soviet Union but not okay for Obama to do so with Iran?
But talk about clueless: I don’t see how anyone who knows anything about this issue can watch Netanyahu say anything about it without seeing his nose grow longer than Pinocchio’s. And only pathological delusion can mislead Netanyahu into thinking he can stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons by, on the one hand, appealing to powerless carpers in the U.S. Congress, while on the other hand, willfully defying not just Obama but all of the world leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with him.
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Until June then….
In the meantime, I would be remiss not to condemn the media for continually featuring the cynical vagaries of warmongers over the earnest entreaties of peacemakers. Regrettably, even more than the discrediting truism about Netanyahu quoted above is this one about the media: if it bleeds, it leads — even in matters of war and peace.
But nothing is more irresponsible in this respect than Republican politicians falling all over themselves to fulminate against this deal as if they were only interested in winning a debate in their presidential primary, not in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Above all else, though, is the manifest absurdity of the major world powers focusing on — what they would have us believe is — the existential imperative of preventing the rogue nation of Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
After all, these same powers are doing practically nothing to prevent the rogue nation of North Korea from threatening to use the nuclear weapons it has already developed. What’s more, in case you haven’t heard, North Korean leaders have been shouting death to America and South Korea with as much persistence and conviction as Iranian leaders have been shouting death to America and Israel.
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