“There should not be a shred of doubt by now: When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.” — Barack Obama, May 2012
Some of the more petty and thin-skinned members of the Obama administration probably enjoyed anonymously calling the Prime Minister of Israel a “chickenshit“, knowing it would be printed in the papers. Using Jeffrey Goldberg as the tool to get the message out on how the Obama administration might harm Israel over the next two years certainly didn’t hurt either.
But don’t get sidetracked by the Obama administration’s crass vulgarity and maliciousness.
Goldberg’s article wasn’t about settlements, and it wasn’t about President Obama’s childish and visceral hatred of Netanyahu.
It was about deflecting attention away from the Obama administration’s ongoing Middle East policy failures, and most specifically, Iran; trying to instead make the public discussion about a grudge match with a supposedly ungrateful Israeli Prime Minister, as well as placing blame on Israel for Obama’s failures.
In 2012, in a Zig moment, before he Zagged, Obama said, “There should not be a shred of doubt by now: When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
But is that really true?
During the war with Gaza, when Israel was defending itself from thousands of missiles, it was the Obama administration that had the FAA shut down flights to Israel. It was the Obama administration that blocked weapon purchases and shipments. It was the Obama administration that was forcing ceasefires on Israel as missiles were still flying at us. And leading up to the Gaza war, it was the Obama administration that pushed to have that same Hamas terrorist organization whitewashed and recognized as part of the Palestinian Authority. And we certainly can’t ignore how Secretary of State Kerry recently blamed ISIS’s popularity on Israel.
In the wider world, it’s the Obama administration that is currently allowing the Islamic Republic of Iran reach the cusp of a nuclear bomb.
And Iran’s nuclear program is what Goldberg’s is article really about.
The very worried Arab states recently cataloged a series of serious concessions the US has supposedly made to Iran, as reported by The Tower.
…that the U.S. has dropped its demand that Iran close its underground military enrichment facility at Fordow, that the U.S. has accepted Iran’s characterization of its enrichment rights regarding uranium, that the U.S. will permit Iran to operate the plutonium-producing reactor at Arak, and that the U.S. has delinked Iran’s ballistic missile program from the rest of its nuclear program.
Simultaneously, the Obama administration is very worried that Congress might stop them from moving forward on their Iranian concessions. They know, a strong Bibi speech can galvanize Congress.
The New York Times reported on plans by President Barack Obama to “do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on “a nuclear deal that many lawmakers have publicly worried will be inadequate to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
What better way to neutralize Netanyahu, than by mocking and disparaging him.
Rahm Emanuel said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” And clearly if you don’t have a crisis, you manufacture one.
What better way to sidestep Obama’s Netanyahu-Iran problem, than a U.S.-Israel crisis – manufactured by the Obama administration.
