RUTHFULLY YOURS

There is a bit of difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to ‎Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the State of Israel, ‎and Israelis too while they are it. Iran’s proxy terror army of Hezbollah ‎contributed their part on Wednesday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank ‎fire from southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more ‎interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli — namely, Prime ‎Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ‎

It has been a remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president ‎delivered his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the course ‎with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, overselling what has already ‎been achieved, as well as what might be achieved. He also threatened to veto new ‎sanctions legislation that might be passed by Congress, where some have called for ‎tougher sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck ‎between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing such a ‎measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians from the ‎negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction, since one area in which the ‎Iranians have shown remarkable consistency has been in negotiating with ‎European powers, or the now expanded negotiating group for over 10 years, ‎always without a satisfactory outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as ‎negotiating while their nuclear program advances.‎

Fact checkers awarded Obama a bunch of “pinocchios” for his latest effort, suggesting he was all ‎but lying on the matter. No, the Iranians have not dismantled any centrifuges (they ‎have more running than before), they have not removed any fissile material from ‎the country for safekeeping, they have not allowed inspections on demand, they ‎have not disabled their Arak heavy-water reactor, they have not agreed to end any ‎missile program they are working on for delivery of a nuclear bomb. ‎

‎”Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran,” Obama said, ‎‎”where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of ‎its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” 

James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the ‎American Foreign Policy Council, begged to disagree:‎

‎”But has Iran’s stockpile shrunk? Under a deal concluded last ‎November, Iran halted work on the most dangerous material, 20 ‎percent refined uranium. However, Iran is still making lower-grade ‎uranium. According to a report from the International Atomic ‎Energy Agency last November, Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched ‎uranium gas and 5 percent enriched uranium were both growing. ‎Also, the agency cautioned that their figures only covered ‎‎’declared sites,’ the nuclear facilities Iran has publicly ‎acknowledged and allowed to be inspected.”‎

In the days after his address to Congress, the president repeated ‎his threats about vetoing new sanctions legislation, when meeting ‎with Democratic senators, several of whom, along with a few ‎Republican colleagues, had been lobbied on the matter by Britain’s ‎visiting Prime Minister David Cameron. The president upped the ‎ante, accusing Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New ‎Jersey, a leader in the attempt to pass new sanctions, of not ‎thinking long-term, but just trying to make his donors (could ‎Obama have meant Jewish donors?) happy.

The idea of a foreign leader directly lobbying members of ‎Congress on an issue like the Iranian sanctions bill took on a new ‎life when House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to ‎address a joint session of Congress on the Iranian issue on ‎February 11. The White House predictably blew its lid, accusing ‎Boehner of breaking established protocol for such an invitation. (It ‎should have been coordinated with the White House.) The usual ‎Obama water carriers like Jeffrey Goldberg were quick to lambaste ‎Netanyahu for stage managing the invitation so as to embarrass ‎Obama, and in the process threaten U.S.-Israel relations. As Joel ‎Pollak describes Goldberg’s argument:‎

‎”In his most recent Atlantic column, he claims, for example, ‎that Obama worked ‘in tandem’ with Netanyahu to promote ‎sanctions on Iran: ‘Netanyahu traveled the world arguing for ‎stringent sanctions, and Obama did much the same.’‎

“That is simply factually untrue. Obama resisted Iran sanctions ‎for months, defying even a unanimous vote in the Democrat-‎controlled Senate. Not only was Israel frustrated, and ‎Congress, but Europe as well, which accused Obama of re-‎inventing the wheel, resetting diplomacy that had started ‎under (gasp) George W. Bush.‎

“In fact, Obama pushed the world towards a more lenient ‎position on Iran, allowing nuclear enrichment in defiance of ‎U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

And then there is this doozy:‎

‎”It is Netanyahu’s job, Goldberg says, as ‘the junior partner in ‎the Israel-U.S. relationship,’ to make concessions.”‎

When it comes to negotiating with Iran, Netanyahu does not ‎sit at the table with the Iranians, but Obama’s representatives ‎do. And it is U.S. negotiators who have been making ‎concessions month after month since the talks began, in what ‎appears to be a desperate attempt to salvage some deal they ‎can broadcast as having achieved a minimal set of objectives. ‎That objective has now been reduced to providing some ‎minimum breakout time for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons ‎capability if they ditch the deal. What will the West do in that ‎time if Iran moves towards the bomb? It is pretty clear, any ‎military response from Obama is out of the question.‎

The administration has further demonstrated its unhappiness ‎about Netanyahu’s impudence in scheming with ‎Boehner, by announcing that neither the president nor his secretary of state will meet with Netanyahu when he visits ‎Washington, a date now moved back three weeks to overlap ‎his visit to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The excuse, ‎couched in a diplomatic smokescreen, is that it would be ‎improper for the president to meet with a candidate for office ‎abroad so close to the time of that country’s election. That ‎would be equivalent to electioneering and interference in the ‎other country’s race. Presumably when President Bill Clinton ‎met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres just weeks ‎before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at a time ‎when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head ‎battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton’s ‎mind. ‎

The Obama team may not meet with Netanyahu when he ‎visits, but an experienced Obama campaign team from 2012 ‎is now in Israel working to defeat Netanyahu. That, in and ‎of itself, is nothing new for Israeli elections. Experienced ‎American campaign teams have aided Israeli candidates from ‎the Left and Right in recent decades. What is new is that the ‎current anti-Netanyahu campaign includes a State ‎Department funded group:‎

‎”U.S.-based activist group OneVoice International has partnered ‎with V15, an ‘independent grass-roots movement’ in Israel that is ‎actively opposing Netanyahu’s party in the upcoming elections, ‎Haaretz reported on Monday. Former national field director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign Jeremy Bird is also ‎reportedly involved in the effort.‎

“OneVoice development and grants officer Christina Taler said the ‎group would be working with V15 on voter registration and get-out-‎the-vote efforts but would not engage in overtly partisan activities. ‎She said OneVoice and V15 are still formalizing the partnership.”‎

Obama’s team has gone further to poison the waters for ‎Netanyahu, planting a story in Haaretz that the Mossad was ‎opposed to new sanctions legislation, a charge they publicly ‎rebutted.‎

The Goldberg article was designed to deliver a message that Israel ‎has two important objectives now — to keep Iran from going nuclear ‎‎(for which their best hope of course is to count on Obama to do the ‎job for them in negotiations), and second, to keep American close ‎and happy with Israel’s behavior. Netanyahu, according to Goldberg, is ‎killing the good vibes that presumably must have existed during the ‎Obama years by his recent behavior.‎

There is an alternative interpretation for what is going on. Obama is ‎really not terribly bothered by a nuclear Iran. A bad deal that looks ‎like it delays Iran’s entry to the nuclear club is therefore not a bad ‎option. It also allows Obama to check off one more box on his ‎achievements list before his formal request to have his likeness ‎carved into Mount Rushmore. Pakistan has a bomb. Israel has the ‎bomb. Why not Iran, the leading Shiite nation? Iran, after all, is now ‎our strategic partner, fighting with us to battle ISIS in Iraq. ‎

The latest evidence that Obama is now on the Iranian team is the ‎New York Times editorial calling for accepting that having Assad ‎hang on in Syria is the least bad result, so backing a non-ISIS ‎Syrian rebel team is a bad idea. The New York Times editorial ‎page is little more than a conveyance tool for White House ‎messaging at this point, and so this is now clearly Obama’s ‎posture. How can we fight alongside Iran in Iraq, but support a side ‎that is fighting Iran’s ally Assad in Syria?

Meanwhile, Hezbollah is stepping up its activities in the Golan. The ‎Iranian goal appears to be to establish a base in Syria where Israel ‎can be targeted by the Lebanese group, without getting an Israeli ‎response in Lebanon itself. What is clear is that Hezbollah and Iran ‎have Israel in their sights. If Iran gets the bomb, the retaliation ‎options for Israel when Hezbollah pressure is applied, will be much ‎more limited. There is no certainty that Iran subscribes to the ‎mutually assured destruction deterrence club.‎

But not to worry. Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to ‎hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. ‎Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 ‎self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India ‎this week? 

Is it any wonder ‎why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, ‎as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily ‎concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose ‎presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?‎