Netanyahu and his advisers briefed a group of senators and senior congressmen during the past two weeks on the Iranian issue, and asked them to pressure Obama on the matter. Last week, Netanyahu met a group of five senior senators over lunch, headed by Sen. John McCain, who ran four years ago against Obama for president. Netanyahu reportedly told the senators he was not interfering in U.S. politics and expected U.S. officials not to interfere in Israeli politics either.
So Netanyahu gets McCain - the president's last electoral opponent - to make the following public statement:"There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat. Unfortunately there clearly is some."
And the "unfortunately" is clearly, in McCain's view, Obama's fault.
So Israelis are deeply conflicted on this - something you won't find reported every day on the op-ed page of the Washington Post. That's why Netanyahu desperately needs US cover for an attack; and is furious he cannot simply push them around as he was once wont to do. Nonetheless, he has a united Republican front in Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, funded by Greater Israel fanatics like Sheldon Adelson, and in desperate need of a way to ignite the Christianist base. He will have a chunk of Democrats as well - and next week's AIPAC conference to beat the drums for war. He also has the potential to send oil to $7 a gallon by election day - and tip Europe and the world into both a new terror crisis and a deeper, longer recession. All of this is leverage to get Obama to do something of enormous risk to the Middle East, the West and the wider world, and launch a war that America, rather than Israel, would have to own.
Note to Barry: Israel doesn't want to go down the shitter all by itself. You could really impress ol' Bibi by learning to say "fuck off" in Hebrew.
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