Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at U.N. yesterday. Photo, Haaretz
You have to hand it to "Bibi", if nothing else he is consistent, ("Bibi" being Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).
Given his chance to speak before this year's U.N. General Assembly meeting yesterday, Netanyahu with a crude illustration of a bomb with a fuse depicting the stages of Iran's nuclear development in hand, he reiterated his demand for a "red line" to trigger military action if Iran refused to halt its nuclear development.
All that was missing from his performance was the usual base drum cacophony in the background simulating his desire to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
On Monday, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kept the pot boiling with his usual denunciations of the "Zionist state" with his inflammatory "Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be eliminated". Just remember, Ahmadinejad is just a figurehead in the quixotic Iranian scheme of government. The ultimate power in Iran rests in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and not the mouth that roared president.
Be that as it may, too bad jousting and dueling are no longer in style as "Bibi" and his antagonist Ahmadinejad could challenge one another with the best outcome being they'd kill each other simultaneously and the present conflict between Israel and Iran would turn to cooler heads and the whole controversy ended with some adult like diplomacy.
But alas, such fantasizing is not to be. And with Netanyahu's caustic appeals unrelenting in the U.S. media to keep this pot at fever pitch, it's been all Obama can do to keep the fiery Israeli leader on a leash and acting on his own. Yet keeping Netanyahu at bay from a distance is the best that Obama can do until at least after the U.S. election.
After that, assuming Obama gets re-elected, all bets are off vis---vis Iran and any potential military strike on that country.
From here, "Bibi" represents the most dangerous man on the planet. He's the one that talks aggression, not Ahmadinejad and Iran. Iran responds defensively and is threatening no other country. Think about it; Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons but Israel and its sponsor the U.S. do. Economic sanctions, a naval armada operating directly off its coast, assassination of its nuclear scientists, cyber warfare against its nuclear facilities are all precipitated by the Israeli's and/or the U.S. toward Iran, not the other way around. So Iran says if it's attacked it would retaliate against Israel and American outposts in the Middle East. That sounds justifiable and would even be acting in accordance with the U.N. Charter whereby countries have a right to defend themselves if they are in danger of imminent attack or are directly attacked.
This whole canard of Iran and a nuclear weapon threatening Israel and America is absurd and paranoid propaganda perpetrated by Netanyahu, AIPAC and the hard Jewish right as well as their knee jerk defenders in the Congress who kneel before AIPAC and their big moneyed contributors; with all but a few in Congress fearful of criticizing Israeli policy and thereby being branded as anti Semites.
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