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Dennis Ross: Blame America First

by Ali Gharib
The excerpt from former Obama administration official Dennis Ross’s new book, which ran recently in Politico Magazine, is a remarkable document. The excerpt is headlined “How Obama Got to ‘Yes’ on Iran: The Inside Story,” but that’s not actually what it’s about at all. (In fairness, editors are normally responsible for headlines.) It’s actually the story of how a senior Obama administration official—Dennis Ross—sought during his time in government and after to placate an intransigent Israeli leadership that, though Ross never mentions it, opposed any serious U.S.-Iranian negotiations from the outset.
Ross provides a revisionist history of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s take on diplomacy with Iran, particularly in the run-up to the November 24, 2013 Geneva interim deal with Iran. In this telling, Netanyahu bears little or no responsibility for his rocky relationship with Barack Obama. The problem was simply that Obama didn’t do enough for Netanyahu and Israel. “Overall within the administration,” Ross concluded, “there remained a strong consensus on our policy toward Iran. Negotiations need to be pursued. But in the process we damaged our relationship with Israel far more than we needed to.” We damaged our relationship with the Israelis, you see, with no accounting for anything the Israelis did.http://lobelog.com/dennis-ross-blame-america-first/#more-31524