Warning to Binyamin Netay: Never directly challenge the king in public.

Maybe Mr. Netay wants an even shorter premiership this time around.

It is long last time Israel learns the lesson that they can not give America ultimatums. Unfortunately, it will take America learning that lesson first for it to happen. I don't hold out much hope for that.

If I were Obama, I know what I'd say (privately) to Netanyahu. And he would not like it.

What nukes ? Iran has some thirty year old outmoded centrifuges ... are they a problem ?

The same people are making up the same story that was a big fat lie last time ... it is certain they do not believe their own story .. it is doubtful very many thoughtful people believe it ...

Why does this nonsense get treated with respect ?

A bunch of pugnacious bastards want to start ANOTHER war - and they are treated as if legitimate. Why do we have to put up with this crap ?

The Americans should put the kibosh on this scheme, today. So sick, so heartily sick, of their crapola.

The Israelis can't take on Iran w/out US so the gigantic bluff speculation is probably accurate.

I found the brand-spankin' new rationale for what Iran is up to hilarious:

"Few in Netanyahu’s inner circle believe that Iran has any short-term plans to drop a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv, should it find a means to deliver it. The first-stage Iranian goal, in the understanding of Netanyahu and his advisers, is to frighten Israel’s most talented citizens into leaving their country. “The idea is to keep attacking the Israelis on a daily basis, to weaken the willingness of the Jewish people to hold on to their homeland,” Moshe Ya’alon said. “The idea is to make a place that is supposed to be a safe haven for Jews unattractive for them. They are waging a war of attrition.”

So now Iran is responsible for the Israeli brain drain? Talk about displacement....

Yup. So I guess it's a duty of all Americans to reverse the braindrain by attacking Iran. Our "special relationship" requires that we insure that the Israelis emigrating to Germany instead stay put in the light unto nations.

I'm used to egregious bullshit coming out of the mouths of Israeli politicians but this has to take the cake.

Goldberg is so funny in his admiration of the manlyman bibi.
Nevermind that bibi's fellow citizens think he's a putz. Only in America does bibi's brother's very really heroism rub off on the man-afraid-of-Richard-Perle's-pooch.

I recall reading that Iran's Natanz nuclear facility cannot be destroyed without using nuclear weapons. Is Netanyahu prepared to acknowledge the existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal? Someone ought to ask.

Obama has an opportunity here.
I believe that, if he were to publicly tell Yahoo "you're on your own if you attack Iran," he'd get a very favorable response in the US and abroad.

MJ: I'm confused. If Netanyahu is a Israeli elected official, isn't it right that he is looking out for Israel's safety and interests?

Are you suggesting that he should be looking out for America's interests? Wouldn't that be dual loyalty, a subject you happen to be fond of bringing up?

MJ - I've read the interview, and I'm genuinely surprised at you.

Netanyahu comes across as reasonable, and your position truly comes across as incoherent. Netanyahu is sworn and duty-bound to protect Israel's interests. Are you telling us that even if he genuinely believes that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, and that the threat can be removed by appropriate actions, he shouldn't do it without permission from the United States?

What kind of distorted logic is that?

Thanks for post lally. I do wonder how anyone can argue Iran is crazy but Pakistan is no danger at all. It has nukes, is prone to coups, probably is home to Osama bin Laden, and aside from the Islamic extremists that riddle the security services, there's the war with India always right there, ready to get going at any time.

What's Iran got that compares to that.?

When dealing with Israel, the US needs to appreciate that arrogance takes no account of logic or reason. If and when Netanyahu and his extremist foreign minister decide to attack Iran, they will take no account of any consideration other than their own narrow interest. They will gamble that America will not suspend aid on the premise that Israel is strategically essential to the US and its oil interests in the Gulf. They will take no account of the inevitable consequences worldwide to such an unwarranted attack and the killing it will engender internationally in reprisal. The new Israeli administration is a loose cannon that can cause huge economic and political damage - and let us not forget - is now estimated to be the fifth most powerful nuclear state in the world, albeit completely unadmitted or uninspected. The status quo is becoming a nightmare and we are all in it.

The type and degree of policy influence first Sharon and then Olmert enjoyed over US policy was viewed as an Israeli asset during Bush/Cheney. One way to view this is a "test" of whether or not that asset remains in tact. I suspect Bibi can soon expect a visit from George Mitchell telling him those days are over.

Two weeks ago I finished reading Robert Baer's book, published last fall, "The Devil We Know" making the case for the US persueing a settlement of outstanding issues with Iran. Book came out just before the election last fall, and had been buried in my stack of "to read" for several months. Baer, as readers might know, is a 20 year plus CIA Arabic Speaking Officer who retired just prior to the Bush Administration, and has written three books, highly critical of CIA and policy -- particularly the US tie to the Saudi's and post 1990 policy vis a vis Afghanistan and Pakistan -- see in particular, "Sleeping with the Devil" about US/Saudi links. The most recent book is the result of Baer being hired by BBC to produce a series of Documentaries on the Middle East, which caused him to return to the Middle East and renew a whole set of relationships so as to craft "state of play" documentaries.

Baer sees US interests as ending our now 30 year exclusion of Iran from normal relations, negotiating settlements of outstanding issues, and then trying to drive something of a middle course between the Sunni group (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc) and the emerging Iranian Empire, (Shia Iraq, Lebanon, -- which will be politically dominated by Hezbollah, -- and Turkey which will be interested in normal relations with Iran). Baer's sense is that several of the Gulf States now see their own interests more attached to those of Iran, and particularly in the wake of the failure of Dubai's financial center development scheme, weak. He suggests the Saudi's are internally weak, likely to face major internal challenges in the next few years.

Those who support Israel ought to read Baer's book carefully understanding it as the potential script for the near future in the Middle East. In particular, it is critical to read Baer's observations on West Bank Palestinians, whom he sees as now very much under the influence of Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and not as some would have it, influenced by Hamas, or having any continuing support for the Fatah or the PA. (Of course both have their Iranian connections, which Baer tracks.) Baer sees Israel's future much influenced by how realistic it is regarding the coming place of Iran as the dominant force in the Middle East (not just military, but political. Iran can and does keep agreements, and provides a culture of "law and order" where that is the highest value popular expectation of governance.) At any rate, Baer sees Israel's future very much tied to how realistic it is in understanding the emergence of Iran as the dominant state in the Middle East -- he calls it an Empire, and roots much of what he has to say in an understanding of the thousands of years in which the Persian Empire was the dominant state in the Middle East.

I have no ideas whether Robert Baer is "right" about this -- but I do observe that he was "right" about the failure of the US to reach a settlement in Afghanistan at the end of the Soviet Occupation, and he was "right" about the complex nature of the Lebanon Wars, he was "right" in his prediction that the US would be attacked by a Saudi-Sunni faction prior to 9/11, (as well as the difficulties many European Countries would and will have with their immigrant Arab populations,) and I sense he is correct as to the weakness of the Saudi state. His latest book is written in the form of a CIA Intelligence product -- long descriptions of the available intelligence followed by options segments and their probable (possible) outcomes.

As far as I can see, the emerging Obama Administration seems to be considering his analysis.

History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested.

I'm not sure what Goldberg is suggesting here. Threats, or perceived threats? What's the template that delimits "perceived"? How does anyone know when they've slipped out of that range and become real - a real threat/mortal danger? And in this context, a target of Israel?

When they hear the jets and missiles, I guess.

Here's my problem: If we accept Goldberg's position - or that of, say, the Anti-Defamation League - Jews are in a constant state of "threatened". Everywhere. I can't think of another ethnic or religious group so relentlessly, consistently tormented and endangered. Have Jews themselves ever considered this? Here's the model: Jews are imperiled by non-Jews because... gentiles bear endless enmity toward Jews because... gentiles aren’t Jews. Corkscrewy, but isn't that basically it? This has left Jews in a constant state of mortal danger and in need of global rescue, because, of course, most of the world's population is gentile. And Jews endlessly remind non-Jews that they must be wary of endlessly evil gentiles who are forever a living, existential threat to Jews. For proof, we have the endless circuit of violence in the Middle East, the tragedy of the Holocaust and centuries of persecution in Christendom. (Although it's odd that, if the early European afflictions were as relentless and severe as today's political model would have it, Jews never migrated en masse to, say, Islam - defined by that model as an epitome of progressive tolerance; when Jews fled, they did so consistently to other Christian countries.)

This isn't to diminish history, or historical suffering. But this is about today, and the evidence of peril we can perceive - clearly, with some degree of objectivity, detachment. (It's seems to be a tough subject from which to detach oneself, though.) For the Jews of Israel, today, there comes a point where outsiders - anyone not of the group, or in the fold - can't be designated evil automatically, an enemy instantly without Israel sustaining its own regional isolation: Since its neighbors are Arabs, its neighbors are enemies, evidenlty, forever. There's no real attempt at negotiated settlement, only constant angling for strategic advantage, for hegemony. Israel is only safe if it controls its geographic region with terror and punishment.

It's a dangerous, precarious, and self-defeating posture. It is a trap.

Maybe, if its neighbor states weren't automatically foes, reflexively barbarized, there could be some headway in making that section of the Middle East a little less volatile. That must be done; the whole world should make this a priority. And, no, I'm not suggesting that it's all Israel's fault. Not by a long shot. But someone must begin - someone must kick it all off, blaze a new path, if there is to be any change. Being a pioneer doesn’t necessarily entail betraying culture or tradition, or denying defining fairy tales. In their centuries of Diaspora, Jews have been everyone else's "other". What do Jews really think of their "others"? And how current are those appraisals?

A historical note to San Fernando Curt: there was a mass migration of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Morocco and widely understood Turkey (which extended all the way to Algeria at the time). Some of them moved to Netherlands.

Another thing is that persecution of Jews rarely occurred in many Christian countries at once, so a migration to a neighboring country was typically a more practical choice. In general, Jewish merchants were traveling all the way between western Europe and India. When Portuguese ships reached India, a Jew born in Poland offered his services as a translator (he knew Latin).

One reason for Jewish persecution was that they were ordinarily non-persecuted as an exception. A good Christian monarch strived to have all his (or her, as "Her Majesty Queen Isabela") subject to be of correct religion, be it Roman Catholic or Anglican, and all incorrect folks were persecuted -- except for the Jews. Famous "kill them [all], for God knows His own" was not targeted at Jews, after all.

For several centuries, a chief exception from this ideal of religious purity was Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth, where the nobility was supreme over the kings, and a noble with full rights could be Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, any kind of Reformed Church, some even were Muslim. And most of the Ashkenazi Jews migrated there.

In any case, one can make a point that Jews were very often the least persecuted religious minority.

The lesson from all groups' suffering over the millenia is that killing kids in the name of God or country is an abomination.
Anyone who would suggest bombing Iran and killing civilians knows nothing about Jewish or any other history.
And, Progressive, you sure make a mockery of that label. Ethnic chauvinism is the opposite of progressive.
You are "The Reactionary Conscience."

Oh come on, now!

Netanyahu is no surprise -- he's the slimy hawkish Tory any way you slice it he's always been. I'm reminded of all those people who were 'shocked shocked' that W Bush turned out to be the complete putz that he was and is, after the press covered for him throughout the '00 campaign.

Some, like Nader, insisted that risking him in the White House was no big deal or difference, even after it became clear, including to most of those who supported Nader in 00, that it WAS a big deal.

I am not very optimistic for the future of Israel, or the overall future of the world with the kind of elite that we have, and what they are able to get away with. Obama provides some hope for change, but it looks like the kind of drastic measures on the greenhouse effect and climate chaos that are needed PRONTO are not in the near term offing that is needed. Nor is the mass demand and political leadership, the former of which is squelched by all the usual and unusual means, palmed off as being for other reasons that simply to railroad the earth down the kind of agenda we see unfolding as no matter how awful someone's track record for power is, they generally get off, and often IN (power).

Who would have imagined in 82 that Sharon could have the future in Israeli politics that he did

But we have to keep up optimism of the will, basically because there's no other choice available to the great majority, like the 2d and 3d class passengers who were locked down in their quarters with no hope of escape from the Titanic

Again, my question from above: For those who think Obama should get tough with Netanyahu on the Iran issue, exactly what sort of concrete tools of leverage are they suggesting Obama can and should use?

Huffing and puffing?

A stern talking-to?

A press statement that says "We are not amused"?

If you want to get a foreign country to follow some policy that they are not otherwise inclined to follow on their own accord, then you need to apply some carrots, or sticks, or both. What is MJ's proposal?

I would like to point out that we all continue to discuss the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons as accepted fact. Instead of focusing on the MSM's blathering (which I believe most of us can agree is based less on "fact" and more on the opinion of select government officials and pundits which is then transformed into "truth") turn your attention to what our own intelligence agencies are saying on the subject:

Look! The MSM still offers (some) good info, its only that we have to go trolling for it. This is page one material in the age of the Iranian "enemy".
Dennis Blair: Iran Not Developing Nukes

You Can't Go Home Again

I'm with Rotwang. There's just not enough discussion of Israel on TPMCafe, is there?

I'm surprised by the reactions on this thread. Netanyahu said nothing that should surprise anyone. It's been pretty much the Israeli line for years to paint Iran as a dark threat and suggest that the US should do something to end Iran's nuclear program and, should the US fail to act, that Israel might have to do something on its own. I don't think, however, that anyone is seriously contemplating any military action, at least not in the short term. I think Netanyahu's intention is merely to keep the issue of Iran's nuclear program alive and getting attention from the US administration and the world. It's a technique to keep the pressure on the world to do something about Iran. This seems quite consistent with Israel's statements over the past few years and doesn't, in my eyes, signal any change over the policies of the previous Israeli administration.

Does Israel really want aggressive action against Iran? I think they wouldn't mind it if they could convince the US to take the lead or if they could do it themselves without massive backlash from the rest of the world. But in the current environment where US intervention is unlikely and the world's support for an Israeli unilateral action even less likely, I think Israel is content to keep painting scary pictures and hope that motivates world leaders to continue putting pressure on Tehran.

Is Iran really such a major threat to Israel? I think the threat is exaggerated greatly, though it's not completely nil. It strikes me, though, that Israelis are a tad paranoid and a bit over-willing to take military action against perceived threats from their neighbors. There are good reasons for that paranoia based on both Jewish and Israeli history, but it's still paranoia. When we deal with the Israelis, I think it's important to understand that this paranoia exists and take it into consideration before we follow them unreservedly down belligerent paths.

Well, with this cartoon, you win the douchebag of the thread award. Congrats; there was some really tough competition this time.

This is appalling but hardly surprising news. Netanyahu represents the very sort of element that will lead to the destruction of Israel. It is a terrible irony that without exception right wing leaders who rely almost exclusively on military dominance and the threat of military force nealry always end up weakening the security of their country by doing so. Bush did it to us, Netanyahu (and others like him) threaten to do it to Israel.

Of course, the reason Israel and the US are considered virtually the same entity now is because Israel is a client state of the US. Prior to the Bush years, the US was seen as an honest broker between Israel and the rest of the middle eastern nations and interests. Bush scrapped that when it adopted it's policy of supporting anything and everything any Israeli government chose to do. Big error. I hope the Obama administration can restrain the yahoo part of Netanyahu.

Only Arabs are bound by agreements. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7977002.stm

Moderate and Netanyahu sit uncomfortably side by side in the same sentence. Opportunist and Netanyahu are a much better fit.

There may be a silver lining here. Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu both like to act crazier than they really are, as a pressure tactic, and more belligerent than they really are, to satisfy local warhawks. Enter Obama, new leader of the free if recessionary world, a man with a relatively clean slate, relatively unburdened by experience except where it counts most: in getting opponents to work together for common and individual interests.

A possible grand bargain: 1. Iran gets to keep its nuclear program, with new much tougher restrictions to limiting it to reactors, but dressed up to look like a victory, plus various international trade and education carrots contingent on adherence to the nuclear deal. 2. Palestine gets its statehood and the best economic recovery plan international think tanks funded by Arab oil money can devise. 3. The West Bank settlers get to keep only few settlements but get very attractive relocation packages for leaving the rest. 4. Hamas gets new hospitals, rec centers, job training centers named after it, but all users thereof must attend internationally-run de-terrorism education programs. 5. Netanyahu, Obama, and Abbas or other non-Hamas Palestinian get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

How to reach such a deal is unclear, but there are reasons why we have graduate programs in diplomacy, a foreign service, and a state department.

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