http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1805
Iran, The New York Times and Yuval Diskin
Leave it to The New York Times to get in a grand “two-fer” and call it news.
Reporting yesterday on assessments by “officials and outside analysts” that the likelihood of a military conflict with Iran is waning, the newspaper made sure to assert that “a growing divide in Israel between political leaders and military and intelligence officials over the wisdom of attacking Iran has begun to surface.”
According to the nameless sources expressing the good news, “The threat of tighter economic sanctions has prompted the Iranians to try more flexible tactics in their dealings with the United States and other powers, while the revival of direct negotiations has tempered the most inflammatory talk on all sides.”
The “flexible tactics” referred to here involve Iran’s having sent a delegation to the 5+1 summit in Istanbul a couple of weeks ago to “talk” about uranium enrichment, and its willingness to return to the round table in Baghdad this month for further diplo-dialogue.
Indeed, such a loud sigh of relief was heaved in Washington after the summit in Turkey that it could be heard throughout the mosques and the Majlis (Parliament) in Tehran.
U.S. President Barack Obama has been in a bind these days. On the one hand, he cannot afford to alienate Jewish donors, some of whom are concerned that he is a bit too soft on Iran and a tad too tough on Israel. And while in Europe, figures like Gunther Grass are able to get away with saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a greater global danger than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, American-Jewish liberals haven’t gone quite that far yet.
On the other hand, the last thing in the world that Obama wants or intends to do is take actual steps against Iran; nor does he want or intend for Israel to do the dirty work. From the outset of his presidency, Obama has made it clear that his main goal as commander-in-chief is to make Muslims feel good about themselves — and realize what a great friend they have in the White House.
He said as much in Cairo a few months after his inauguration, when he spoke before a Muslim Brotherhood-heavy audience, and used an Arabic form of address used in the Islamic world exclusively between Muslims.
He spelled it out for the head of NASA, whom he instructed to make it the space agency’s key mission to help Muslims feel good about their accomplishments in science and math. Most importantly, he has shown this to be his objective by consistently abandoning allies in the Middle East in favor of radical Islamists.
This is not to say that the U.S. president necessarily wants Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But this possibility seems less daunting to him in an election year than arousing the ire of the people who determine the price of oil or those who have to pay for it at gas stations. And no ridiculous “energy-saving” schemes he keeps trying to cook up alter that fact.
