No President or high level diplomat would openly criticize a foreign administration 2 months before an election, unless they wanted to damage that administrations chances of winning the election. This is BS pure and simple.
Mr. Netanyahu does not make U.S. foreign policy, and his saber rattling and running off at the mouth, is making an extremely delicate diplomatic situation very difficult. If Mr. Netanyahu was serious about resolving the problematic situation in Iran, he would talk to his number 1 ally and supporter in private, and not openly challenge them to make lines in the sand.
This is a very dangerous situation, and Mr. Netanyahu is making it much worse. If Iran's leaders are so crazy that they would consider a first strike on Israel, the last thing you would want to do is go around the world challenging your allies to strike first.
The right wing press in the U.S. and Israel are beginning to join in the saber rattling and this situation can spin out of control if Mr. Netanyahu doesn't STFU and take his concerns to private diplomatic channels.
What the U.S. press is saying, and some very scary stuff in some Israeli press below the fold.
From the New York Times this morning.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most contentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike.
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They also suggested that he is willing to use the pressure of the presidential election to try to force Mr. Obama to commit to attack Iran under certain conditions.
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In another sign of tensions, the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Tuesday that the Obama administration had declined a request from Mr. Netanyahu’s office for a meeting with Mr. Obama when the Israeli leader attends the United Nations General Assembly this month.
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On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama called Mr. Netanyahu to try to calm the situation. The two talked for a full hour, hashing through the Iran confrontation and their misunderstandings.
I would love to have heard the phone conversation between President Obama and Mr. Netanyahu. I can only guess that President Obama told Mr. Netenyahu that if a right wing politician from Israel wants to openly help a right wing politician in a U.S. presidential election, there are going to be consequences.
But this saber rattling is getting way out of hand. An Israeli publication (possibly right wing) recently published an op-ed piece about how an Israeli EMP attack could throw Iran back to the stone age.
Israel might attack Iran by using electromagnetic pulses (EMP) that could cripple the country by shutting down its electronics and sending the Islamic Republic “back to the Stone Age,” The London Sunday Times reported.
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The “back to the Stone Age” tactic was first proposed in an Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) article in early August by Dr. Joe Tuzara, after another Arutz Sheva oped writer, attorney Mark Langfan described its power in an earlier article.
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The WorldNetDaily reported three weeks ago, “Israelis have not ruled out a Jericho III missile launch to detonate a single electromagnetic pulse warhead at high altitude over central Iran."
The Sunday Times report quoted Bill Gertz, editor of the Washington Free Beacon, said that the United States expressed concern about using a high-altitude nuclear bomb to set off the an EMP attack.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with an
Electromagnetic_pulse attack, it's basically a very high altitude Nuclear explosion that uses the earths Magnetic field to transfer a high voltage shock to electronics within a large area below the detonation.
This is insanity, and I mean real insanity. We're talking about a nuclear attack here, without the blast wave or radiation. And I haven't found anywhere where Mr. Netanyahu has criticized or distanced himself from such talk.
Now I deeply sympathize with the Israeli people. We in the U.S. know what it's like to have a right wing president rattling his saber and running around practicing cowboy diplomacy, and it aint pretty.
I hope the administration will tell Mr. Netanyahu to keep his nose out of our elections, and they will pull him aside and tell him to quit rattling his saber and publicly beating the war drums.