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Israeli President Peres Smacks down PM Netanyahu on Iran Attack, Supports Obama
For the past couple of weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, have been making strident noises about a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. It is hard to believe that the far right wing Israeli government actually would be so foolish as to mount such an attack by itself, and in the midst of the US presidential campaign.
Obviously, the threats are a form of blackmail. They want something from US President Barack Obama, and this wild talk is the way they think they can get it. Their war talk is a form of blackmail. It gives the Republicans ammunition against Obama, since they can say America’s close ally thinks Obama isn’t doing enough. Obama wants the traditionally Democratic Jewish vote and the campaign donations of wealthy Jewish Americans, and Netanyahu is trying to hurt him. So what do they want?
Obviously, they want Obama to pledge to attack Iran, instead. Specifically, they are said to want Obama to adopt the Israeli ‘red lines’
on Iran, that its scientific establishment must not be allowed to gain even the abstract knowledge of how to construct a nuclear warhead, on pain of a massive US bombing raid. The problem for them is that the US intelligence establishment does not believe Iran is constructing a nuclear warhead, and does not believe that immediate action against Iran on the nuclear issue is warranted. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has forbidden the construction or stockpiling
of actual nuclear weapons. Moreover, as Andy Card might say, a president doesn’t roll out a new product 80 days before an election (you could never be sure a new war would go well, and if it didn’t it might end your presidency). Netanyahu and Barak do not disagree with the former assessment. Barak said in January that
Iran “is evidently not trying to procure nuclear weapons.”
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