Bibi Netanyahu has had a very nice couple of weeks, during which he has proved to be a vey sharp politician and a devoted student of the evil political genius, Niccolo Machiavelli. About a month ago Bibi looked around his country and realized that he had a pretty good chance of losing the up-coming election. So instead of mimicking his American politicos and raising mounds more money and using it to attack his opponent, Bibi set out on a far different and more clever course.
Bibi knows that The Weeper, John Boehner hates Obama so much that he will sell his kids into slavery just to get something bad to say about him. So Bibi lets Boehner know that he will be glad to attack Obama’s negotiating strategy with Iran if Boehner will invite him to say it before The House of Representatives. Boehner like a little kid faced with a big box of candy corn, jumps and the con is in motion.
Next Bibi comes over here and makes a big speech about what a lousy job Obama is doing in negotiations, about how he’s giving away the store and how no treaty is better than a bad treaty. Everything looks great for Boehner and Bibi. But let’s take a look at a couple of facts that just might mitigate the points made in that, more than faulty, speech.
First of all, Israel is ass deep in nuclear weapons, enough of them that they could turn all the sand in the Middle East into glass. Second; thus far Iran doesn’t have any nuclear weapons and if they did manage to get one, they would be putting the entire nation into great danger of being, not a nuclear power but a nuclear target. These are not dumb people. They are very aware of this fact and want no part of it. There are many things that Iran may want out of these negotiations but the ability to actually make a bomb is not one of them. The lifting of sanctions, trade treaties, a market for their oil, maybe even conventional weapons are just a few of their possible goals.
Bibi knows all this and realizing it understands that no matter what he says Iran isn’t going to invade Israel. But Iran has in the past, made a lot of noise about killing all the Jews and knowing that all the Israelites have big ears on this subject, Bibi has found a smooth path to great advantage.
Bibi has, by the end of his address to congress, accomplished two goals, neither of which involves stopping the mythic nuclear attack by Iran. He has set himself up as the war-God to the far right in his country and he has garnered even greater financial support from the Sheldon Adelson’s of the United States.
For a couple of days it looks like the speech has backfired, the opposition gains a lead of a couple of points, but Bibi has yet to fire the next round. Just before the election he makes a speech in which he warns about the Arab/Israeli voters that will overwhelm him at the polls and then he declares that he will never sit still for a two state solution for the West Bank. It’s a master-stroke, every fascist Jew in Israel rushes to the polls in panic and Bibi wins an overwhelming victory.
Of course, the battle over and the war won, he comes out the next day and affirms that he had misspoken about the two state solution and that he is actually still in favor of it, and that he didn’t really mean all those bad things he said about Arab/Israeli citizens. He really isn’t a bigot, just a great guy, worried about the future of his country and yes, he really does have a bridge for sale in a Hassidic section of Brooklyn. Then to top it off, Boehner, who has never gotten his nose out of Bibi’s ass, and just to prove what a dumb SOB he really is, runs over to Tel Aviv to bathe his feet.
The give-aways were pretty evident. Not once during his harangue against Obama did Bibi come up with any solution of his own to the problems he claimed Obama was not solving. Why, because he didn’t have one. Anyone even half as smart as Bibi would never have opened such a bag of worms without an answer if he thought there was really a danger of a real nuclear weapon. Bibi pulled our congressional pants down and laughed all the way back to Tel Aviv and an election victory. It was an evil, underhanded ploy but somewhere in dirt of this world Niccolo Machiavelli is smiling in his grave.
All the noise about Bibi’s speech comes down to a few salient facts. Boehner, as has been his history, was trying to pull off a political coup that backfired, making him look like a stupid, whiny school kid whose attempt at playground bullying had just gotten him punched in the nose. Bibi, who has a legitimate worry about the security of Israel, overplayed his hand because he doesn’t trust us, the only country that had ever completely supported Israel, to pull off a treaty with Iran that would protect his country. Maybe his lack of trust is based on his inability to negotiate anything but the threat of war since he’s been in office. It’s obvious that Bibi doesn’t trust Iran, which is understandable because Bibi, being wholly untrustworthy himself, knows a rat when he smells one
Israel is probably safer now than it has been in the last 60 years. The Islamic forces that are normally poised to do it in, are so busy hating and killing each other that they seem to have lost sight of the fact that they have an enemy that they can all hate together. Israel has gotten very buddy-buddy with the Saudi’s, and despite some significant posturing, Iran really doesn’t want the trouble or the responsibility of a nuclear weapon. That doesn’t mean that they are going to go quietly. They have made just enough noise to paint themselves into a corner from which they will only be freed if it can be done without them losing too much face.
The Ayatollahs understand that if they are to continue in power, this, by Islamic standards, modern nation, they will have to emerge from negotiations with some kind of prize that allows them to look more like leaders than the bumbling religious bigots that they are.
Secretary of State Kerry is moving along slowly but surely on a path to getting all these strings unraveled and put in some kind of order but he surely didn’t need the fascist from Tel Aviv bumbling into what he is doing just so he could get elected again.
Our congress is right in wanting to have some kind of say in the final result but they are overstepping their bounds to want to be part of the negotiating process. There are just too many dumb shit-kickers in congress, who talk before they think, which is the death of any negotiating process.
Yes, we have to worry about giving away the store, which in this case means allowing Iran too much leeway after the deal is set, but listening to Bibi’s call for more sanctions before the negotiations are further along is taking a tool out of the hands of Kerry and also forcing the Iranians to react negatively against such a move.
All in all it seems that Kerry has the problem in hand. Yes, there will be many stops and starts but in the end it is in the best interests of all concerned for them to come to some solution and despite previous failures, it appears that this time some progress will be made
≠