But Netanyahu was soft-pedaling his real message, which was that ISIS with its "butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube" was a minor annoyance compared to Iran, which he accused of "gobbling up the nations" of the Middle East. To the applause of Congress, he claimed "Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran's aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow."
His choice of capitals was peculiar because Iran took none of those capitals by force and, indeed, was simply supporting the embattled government of Syria and was allied with elements of the government of Lebanon. As for Iraq, Iran's allies were installed not by Iran but by President George W. Bush via the U.S. invasion. And, in Yemen, a long-festering sectarian conflict has led to the capture of Sanaa by Houthi rebels who deny that they are supported by Iran (although Iran may have provided some limited help).
Amid the wild and inchoate cheering by Republicans and many Democrats, Netanyahu continued: "We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror." But, in reality, there has been no "march of conquest." There have been no images of Iranian armies on the march or a single case of Iranian forces crossing a border against the will of a government.
Cheering the Propaganda
Netanyahu's oration was just another example of his skillful (but dishonest) propaganda -- and the groveling behavior of the U.S. Congress when in the presence of an Israeli leader.
Among the many facts that Netanyahu left out was Israel's historically close ties to Iran even during the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s when the Israelis served as a key Iranian arms supplier after the Saudi-backed Iraqi invasion of Iran. Only after that eight-year-long war ended -- and Iran's treasury was depleted -- did Israel shift away from Iran and toward the oil-rich Saudis.
Regarding the Syrian civil war, senior Israelis have made clear they would prefer Sunni extremists to prevail over President Assad, who is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam. Assad's relatively secular government is seen as the protector of Shiites, Christians and other minorities who fear the vengeful brutality of the Sunni jihadists who now dominate the anti-Assad rebels.
In one of the most explicit expressions of Israel's views, its Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post in September 2013 that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.
"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
And, if you might have thought that Oren had misspoken, he reiterated his position in June 2014 at an Aspen Institute conference. Then, speaking as a former ambassador, Oren said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria.
"From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said.
Israel's preference has extended into a tacit alliance with Al-Qaeda's Nusra Front in Syria, with which the Israelis have essentially a non-aggression pact, even caring for Nusra fighters in Israeli hospitals and mounting lethal air attacks against Lebanese and Iranian advisers to the Syrian military.
A Powerful Alliance
Over the past decade, the Israelis and the Saudis have built a powerful alliance, a relationship that has operated mostly behind the curtains. They combined their assets to create what amounted to a new superpower in the Middle East, one that could project its power mostly via the manipulation of U.S. policymakers and opinion leaders -- and thus deployment of the U.S. military.
Israel possesses extraordinary political and media influence inside the United States -- and Saudi Arabia wields its oil and financial resources to keep American officialdom in line. Together, the Israeli-Saudi bloc now controls virtually the entire Republican Party, which holds majorities in both chambers of Congress, and dominates most mainstream Democrats as well.
Reflecting the interests of the Israeli-Saudi bloc, American neocons have advocated U.S. bombing against both the Syrian and Iranian governments in pursuit of "regime change" in those two countries. Prominent neocons, such as John Bolton and Joshua Muravchik, have gone to the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post to openly advocate U.S. bombing campaigns against Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran."]
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