WarSclerotic

NYT: For Israel, Iran strike is ‘only acceptable outcome’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( Unrelenting attacks on Israel, courtesy of the NY Times.  Ooops!  Sorry, I meant White House public relations… – JW )

New York Times continues to criticize Israeli policies; Thomas Friedman says Israel, Gulf countries want to keep Iran isolated and weak but that US has other interests

Ynet

Some of America’s allies, including Israel, consider an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as “the only acceptable outcome,” the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman says. In an op-ed discussing US interests in negotiations with Tehran, Friedman writes that Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ” don’t trust this Iranian regime — and not without reason.”

He argues that while pressure from American allies in the form of sanctions on Iran brought it to the negotiating table, that pressure was “never meant to be an end itself.”

“We, America, are not just hired lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs, which they alone get the final say on. We, America, have our own interests in not only seeing Iran’s nuclear weapons capability curtailed, but in ending the 34-year-old Iran-US cold war, which has harmed our interests and those of our Israeli and Arab friends,” Friedman writes.

The publicist states that “there is nothing that threatens the future of the Middle East today more than the sectarian rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. This rift is being used by President Bashar Assad of Syria, Hezbollah and some Arab leaders to distract their people from fundamental questions of economic growth, unemployment, corruption and political legitimacy.”

Friedman then claims that “The Iran-US cold war has prevented us from acting productively on all these interests.”

He quotes Nader Mousavizadeh, a former top aide to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as saying “There are those in the Middle East who prefer ‘a tribal war without end.’ They can have it. But it can’t be our war. It’s not who we are — at home or abroad.”

This is the second New York Times op-ed in two days that comes out against Israeli policies.

In an editorial published Tuesday, the paper claimed that “inconclusive negotiations” between Iran and world powers “have given an opening to the Israeli prime minister to generate more hysterical opposition.”

The liberal-leaning paper stated that “It would be nice if Iran could be persuaded to completely dismantle its nuclear program, as Mr. Netanyahu has demanded, but that is unlikely to ever happen.

The editorial expressed disappointment that the failure of negotiations allowed Congress, Israel and Saudi Arabia “an opportunity to sabotage a deal.”

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