“The rest of the world can stop worrying about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s supposed threat to bomb Iran,” writes Gareth Porter at AlJazeera. “Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly last week appears to mark the end of his long campaign to convince the world that he might launch a unilateral strike on Iran’s nuclear programme.
“The reason for Netanyahu’s retreat is the demonstration of unexpectedly strong pushback against Netanyahu’s antics by President Barack Obama. And that could be the best news on the Iran nuclear issue in many years.”
I suppose we owe Netanyahu a debt of gratitude for his unrelenting pressure on the Obama administration to back him up in his threats to attack Iran. Were it not for that, as Porter reports, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey might not have said: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [the Israelis] choose to do it.” [and] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [might not have] declared, “We’re not setting deadlines” [and Leon Panetta might not have said] “Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to put people in a corner.”