WarSclerotic

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has welcomed comments by U.S. President Barack Obama pushing forward diplomacy and not war as a solution to Tehran’s nuclear ambition, Iran’s state TV reported on Thursday.

The report quotes Khamenei as praising a recent statement by the U.S. president saying he saw a “window of opportunity” to use diplomacy to resolve the nuclear dispute.

	Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
	Photo by: AP

It is one of the rare cases in which Iran’s top leader praised an American leader.
However Khamenei said the West’s sanctions on Iran would fail.

The U.S., Israel and their allies suspect Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, a charge Iran denies.

On Tuesday, Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and told him that he believes there is time for diplomacy with Iran. However, he did reiterate to Netanyahu that the U.S. is not taking any options off the table, including a military option.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been trying to garner Obama’s support for tougher talk on Iran, and a U.S. commitment to warn against an attack on Iran, should the Islamic Republic cross certain “red lines.”

Hatred, and not only bribery, blinds the eyes of wise men and distorts the words of the righteous. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a hated man. The instinctive and uncontrolled hatred toward him interferes with the possibility of conducting a fair and rational discussion of one of the most fateful issues regarding Israel’s future.

Both his supporters and his detractors are of the same opinion: His current visit to the United States is one of the most important – perhaps the most important – ever undertaken by a prime minister of Israel. And there is also fairly general agreement among those who hate him about defining the aim of the trip – preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

There is also no substantive difference of opinion over the general lines of the preferred modes of action: enlisting the United States and the other countries of the world to participate in painful and believable sanctions that will lead Iran to surrender without a battle. But if these fail, then the time will come for a military option under the leadership of the U.S. And only if all hope has been lost, “And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold” [Isaiah 63:5], only then would we reach the stage of “Therefore my own arm brought salvation unto me.”

Had Netanyahu made up his mind to engage in a preemptive strike, he would not have left Jerusalem. He went to Washington to bring pressure to bear and not to suffer pressure. If he succeeds, then our work, as the sit-quietly-and-don’t-act choir chants, will be done for us by others. Could one hope for a better result than that?

Since we are talking about Israel, no one anticipated that his important and consensual mission would be accompanied by the kind of applause and enthusiasm that he received from American Jewry at the AIPAC conference. But from where do these deep expectations of the failure of his mission spring? What could cause normally wise and intelligent people to place mines and roadside bombs on his path with the aim of degrading, humiliating and weakening him? To cause him to lose his self-confidence precisely on the eve of the vital meetings that were awaiting him on “the most important journey of an Israeli prime minister”? After all, his preferred goal is not substantively different from that of those who denounce him – to place the United States as the spearhead of the world’s activity against Iran.

The Iranian issue was not at the top of the American president’s international agenda. Only Netanyahu, because of his renowned determination to prevent Iran from becoming armed with nuclear weapons, was able to get President Barack Obama to change his agenda. Had a different Israeli prime minister sat before him, let’s say Shimon Peres, he would indeed have returned from Washington crowned with kudos by the Israeli media, but with zero achievements in getting the U.S. to spearhead the prevention of Iran’s nuclearization – the very objective of the Israeli media.

Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington on a mission for the state. And, as he stated at the AIPAC conference, for the entire Jewish people. The thousands of delegates rose to their feet and cheered, and they did not fear being charged with “dual loyalties” when he said that. But above all, he wanted to placate his detractors from home, an understandable psychological reaction. The reports proved that despite the unbridled psychological warfare these opponents had waged against him, he succeeded in raising the Iranian issue to the top of the American political consciousness (perhaps even more than to the top of Israeli consciousness ) and in “entangling” Obama in presidential commitments that had not been given prior to that. Also, almost obviously, to get backing for Israel’s positions in Congress and from the Republican candidates for the presidential elections.

In return for Israeli restraint, Obama has promised to prevent Iran, in a variety of ways, from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Only a resolute and determined steadfastness will lead Israel to free itself of the ancient Jewish feeling that “of the [other] people there was none with me.” And only then will the option remain: “Therefore my own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury, it upheld me.”

There’s something in the air. Something new. Something as recent as this week’s AIPAC conference. And for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s not something to be desired. American conservatives have begun to think out loud that President Barack Obama will win re-election in November. Citing the GOP’s disastrous showing in the 1964 presidential election, influential Washington Post columnist George Will suggested this week in a tone of some resignation (“The presidency is not everything”) that conservatives might better use their energies by concentrating instead on Congressional and Senate races.

No one will be following the campaign more closely than the man adored by Republicans nationwide as the favorite son they can never adopt, Benjamin Netanyahu. And should Obama win a second term, perhaps recouping a measure of Congressional strength on his coattails, Netanyahu stands to lose as much as anyone.

Much of the prime minister’s policy-making strategy has been based on educated hopes for a steady decline in Obama’s first-term electoral strength and a Netanyahu-friendly Republican taking the White House in 2012. Marshalling conservative allies in Congress and the Jewish community, Netanyahu seemed to have shattered the Obama administration’s linkage of Israeli-Palestinian peace progress (with its attendant threats to the settlement enterprise ) and resolution of other regional issues, notably Iran. But it’s a different Netanyahu coming home this week. The Prime Minister’s Office is no longer betting on Obama to lose. You can hear the change in the words of Israeli officials. Before the shift, during the run-up to AIPAC and a closely watched meeting at the Oval Office, the prime minister had five senior U.S. senators over to lunch, a group headed by Republican former presidential candidate John McCain. Officials, riding a frankly pro-Republican wave of sentiment, later quoted Netanyahu as telling the senators he was “disappointed” with Obama administration statements on Iran, adding that the public opposition of administration leaders – apparently including the president – to an attack on Iran “serves the Iranians.”

On Tuesday, as the AIPAC conference ended, government figures in Jerusalem took a markedly different tack, one that began to confront the possibility that Obama may occupy the Oval Office for four fateful second-term years.

“We hope that if he is re-elected in November,” Channel 10 television quoted officials as saying, “that he will appreciate Israel’s restraint, if, in fact, Israel maintains restraint.”

It was not lost on them that, at a key Congressional briefing Tuesday, the head of the U.S. Central Command, Marine Gen. James Mattis, signaled a rebirth of linkage, warning a joint military affairs committee that the current stalemate in the Israel-Palestine stalemate could not continue, and that talks toward a two-state solution were needed.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. By this time, aided by and aiding the Republican-in-all-but-name Netanyahu government, Obama and talk of an urgent need for negotiations toward two states were supposed to be on their way out. But as the U.S. economy recovers and the Republican Party guts itself in efforts to field a credible candidate to face Obama, the Netanyahu government is weighing a challenge that may prove politically second only to that of a nuclear Tehran – an Obama victory.

At issue are the twin underpinnings of the Netanyahu government, expansion of settlements and resistance to granting concessions to Palestinians. They are the cement that has kept in place an ill-fitting collection of political building blocks.

Second-term U.S. presidents often have much more freedom to bring influence to bear on their Israeli allies, a factor of significance if Obama seeks to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace as the cornerstone of his presidency.

Should Obama win, Netanyahu may have to radically rethink the composition of his government, as well as his strategy with respect to the Palestinians. He may have no choice but to begin to put substance to his commitment – empty until now – toward a two-state solution. In theory, Netanyahu will not let this happen without a fight. It is in his every short-term interest to help the GOP recapture the White House. But if Obama’s electoral strength continues to grow, Netanyahu may be forced to concede that his fight has ended before it has truly begun. Most of all, Netanyahu will have to deal differently with Obama himself. It won’t be easy. Where the current U.S. president and Israeli prime minister are concerned, there’s never been a special relationship quite like this one.

Since Netanyahu’s election three years ago, the only genuine leader of the opposition in Israeli politics has been Barack Obama. And for Obama as a first-term American president, Netanyahu has increasingly filled the same role. Early on, Obama mounted what became the only substantive challenge to Netanyahu’s hard-line policies. But when the Washington-wrought freeze on settlement construction failed to jump-start peace negotiations, Netanyahu was quick to leverage Obama’s flagging midterm popularity to his own advantage, turning much of Congress itself into a version of AIPAC. Netanyahu’s May appearance before a joint session of Congress, arranged by Republican lawmakers, took on the tones of a shadow State of the Union address, underscoring the absence of a Republican figure capable of galvanizing broad support even on the U.S. right.

In the end, both men know that the wild card in the deck is war. On a strictly political level, the consequences of war before November – soaring oil prices, a plunging stock market, division and despair among Democrats – could spell defeat for Obama. Poker, with war in the balance, remains a game which Netanyahu, though seasoned, has shown himself to play only erratically. Obama, though new to the game, has become a quick study. Netanyahu is still in the game. But he can no longer afford to bet against Obama.