New York Post
What
could President Obama have been thinking when he claimed that Israel’s
“military and security community” now supports his disastrous nuclear deal with
Iran?
“The country that was most
opposed to the deal,” he said at his Thursday press conference, “acknowledges
this has been a game-changer.”
Well, it didn’t take long for
those same officials to put the lie to the president’s claim — and in unusually
undiplomatic language.
Israel’s Defense Ministry, in
an official statement, compared the deal to the infamous 1938 Munich accord,
whose “basic assumption, that Nazi Germany could be a partner to any kind of
agreement, was wrong.”
Similarly, it added,
“agreements of this kind signed between the world powers and Iran,” which
“states openly” it aims to destroy Israel, are also useless.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu — who was outspoken in trying to halt the deal — sought to soften the
statement’s impact by stressing the strength of the US-Israeli relationship.
But, he added pointedly, Israel’s position “remains unchanged.”
Yes, some former Israeli
defense officials have said the deal could present future “opportunities” — but
also cite its troubling “challenges.”
And one Cabinet minister who
is a top Netanyahu adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, insisted that not only is Israel
not on board with the nuke deal, but rather “the opposite is the case” and that
“all our worries . . . were justified.”
All of which is understandable:
Iran continues to pursue its ballistic-missile program, in violation of UN
edicts. It remains, according to Obama’s own State Department, the world’s
leading sponsor of terror. And when the deal expires, it will be just weeks
from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
The president says the deal’s
most outspoken critics should make public mea culpas and apologize. But if
anyone deserves a mea culpa and an apology, it’s Netanyahu — from Obama.
****
I’ve spent the last
month reading David McCullough’s biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams, most probably because
I just could not watch any more the news on the presidential race of 2016.
I am still puzzled how
was it possible to conduct diplomacy when it took 6 weeks to cross the
Atlantic. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams had to make vital decisions themselves with no
consultation.
What puzzles me even
more today, in the time of instantaneous communication, is how is it possible
that the US government could misrepresent the position of one of its main allies on a subject so vital to the survival
of that ally and not expect that a denial would follow immediately. To what purposes was this done?
