‘Netanyahu Fighting Obama, not Iran’ Netanyahu is acting like Romey’s Henry Kissinger
‘Netanyahu Fighting Obama, not Iran’
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is getting too involved in the United States presidential race, Opposition head MK Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) accused Tuesday. ‘Instead of worrying about defeating Iran, Netanyahu is busy trying to defeat President Obama,’ he said, speaking at the Ono Academic College.
‘The Prime Minister is sticking his hand deep into the elections,’ Mofaz added. ‘This irresponsible, mistaken behavior hurts our relationship with our largest ally.’
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Netanyahu must set red lines on his malice toward Obama. And soon.
If deadlines are in order, Netanyahu might consider his upcoming U.S. visit as an opportune moment to shut down entirely the verbal centrifuges he has set spinning in attacks on the president.
Of late, the many faceted Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have found a new task for himself: Playing an unaccented Henry Kissinger to Mitt Romney’s far more lustrous, far more philo-Semitic version of Richard Nixon.
At first, of course, there was every reason to think that in his role as America’s shadow secretary of state, Netanyahu had found a win-win strategy, one that could work to the advantage of both the prime minister and the Republican Party.
As long as the Obama campaign seemed to be sputtering, there seemed no downside to hectoring, lecturing, and loudly, if indirectly, ridiculing the Obama administration for being soft on Iran. As long as the incumbent president seemed on the ropes, as he did after the sweeping Republican gains in the 2010 midterm elections, Netanyahu could view brinksmanship with the White House over Iran as a sure thing.
Take Netanyahu’s demand that the White House set red lines and deadlines, beyond which the United States would be committed to unleashing a military onslaught against Iranian nuclear facilities.
If President Obama failed to agree, Republicans could paint him as weak and open to appeasement. If, on the other hand, Obama did agree, both Netanyahu and the Republican Party could claim victory, taking Obama to task for lacking the leadership they themselves had shown. —->Continued