Netanyahu`s Speech and the Politics of Iran Policy By Gareth Porter

Netanyahu’s Speech
and the Politics of
Iran Policy
By Gareth Porter
February 03, 2015 "ICH" - Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu’s acceptance of an invitation to speak to the US
Congress on 3 March, two weeks before the Israeli election
and without any consultation with the White House, is aimed
at advancing both Netanyahu’s re-election and the proposed
new set of sanctions against Iran in the US Congress. For
many months, pro-Israeli legislators and lobbyists have been
threatening to re-impose existing sanctions on Iran and add
new ones while negotiations are still going on.
Regardless of the argument that the sanctions legislation is
meant to strengthen the US negotiating hand, the real purpose
of the proponents of sanctions has always been to ensure that
no nuclear agreement can be reached. Those proponents take
their cues from Netanyahu, and that has been Netanyahu’s
openly proclaimed aim ever since the negotiations with the
Rouhani government began. Netanyahu has often insisted that
Israel will not accept an agreement that allows Iran to retain
any enrichment capability.
The Obama administration has made it clear that it would veto
such new sanctions legislation, arguing that it would leave the
United States with no options except the threat of war. That
argument prevailed in the Senate earlier, and the
administration may well be able to use it again to defeat the
Israeli effort to sabotage the negotiations through sanctions
legislation. But there are more battles to come.
Influence and threats
The current tensions over the Netanyahu speech is just the
latest chapter in a long-running drama involving an Israeli
strategy to use its political power in the US Congress to tilt
US Iran policy in the direction Israel desires. But in the past,
that Israeli advantage has been combined with a strategy of
trying to get the United States to take care of Iran’s nuclear
problem by suggesting that, otherwise Israel might have to use
force itself.
Netanyahu’s predecessor, Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert,
initiated that strategy in May-June 2008, when the Israeli Air
Force carried out a two-week air war exercise over the eastern
Mediterranean and Greece. During that exercise, Deputy
Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened that if Iran continued
what he called “its program for developing nuclear weapons”,
Israel “would attack”.
In fact, the purported rehearsal for attack and explicit war
threats were a ruse. The Israeli Air Force did not have the
ability to carry out such an attack, because it had only a
fraction of the refueling capacity it would have needed. The
whole exercise was really aimed at influencing the next US
administration. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who
conceived the strategy, sought to take advantage of the
waning months of the George W Bush administration, which
cooperated with the Israelis in pointing to the exercise as a
signal to Iran that Israel’s most enthusiastic US ally would
leave office in a few months. After Netanyahu was elected
prime minister for a second time in early 2009, he kept Barak
as his defense minister in order to refine the strategy of bluff
to have maximum effect on the Obama administration.
Netanyahu introduced a new element into the ruse, playing the
part of the zealot who viewed himself as the savior of the
Jewish people who would use force to prevent Iran from
continuing its nuclear program. He used two articles by
Jeffrey Goldberg of Atlantic magazine featuring interviews
with Netanyahu or his aides and allies to sway the American
political elite to believe his bluff.
In contrast to his calculated self-created image as a messiah
ready to recklessly go to war, Netanyahu’s reputation in
Israeli political circles was one of a risk-averse politician. The
editor of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, told me in a March 2012
interview that Netanyahu was generally known as a “hesitant
politician who would not dare to attack without American
permission.”
Netanyahu’s phony war
The climax of Netanyahu’s phony war threat was his carefully
calculated showdown with Obama during the 2012
presidential campaign. It began with AIPAC maneuvering a
401-11 vote in the House of Representatives demanding that
Iran be prevented from having “nuclear weapons
capability.” Then, in August – two weeks before the
Republican convention – after leaking to the press that he had
all but made the decision to attack Iran in the fall, Netanyahu
offered Obama what was termed a “compromise”: if he
publicly accepted Netanyahu’s “red line” that Iran would not
be allowed to have the enrichment capability for a bomb,
Netanyahu would consider it a “virtual commitment” by
Obama to “act militarily if needed” and “reconsider” his
decision to attack Iran.
Netanyahu believed Obama would be forced to go along with
the offer by the threat from a militantly pro-Israel Romney
campaign, fueled by tens of millions of dollars from Sheldon
Adelson, Netanyahu’s main financial backer for many years.
But instead, Obama got tough with Netanyahu. The Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey declared
that he – meaning the US military – would not be “complicit”
in any Israeli attack. Several days later, in a long phone
conversation with Netanyahu, Obama flatly rejected his
demand for a time limit on how long the US would wait for
Iran to comply with its negotiating demands. And he refused
to meet with the prime minister during a trip to the United
States later that month.
Israel’s Congress allies constrain Obama
After that defeat, the air went out of Netanyahu’s war threat
strategy. But he still has his minions in Congress, and they
have had a palpable impact on Obama’s negotiating position
in the nuclear talks. The demand for a much smaller number
of Iranian centrifuges than required to guarantee against an
Iranian dash for a bomb was adopted primarily in order to
stave off a concerted attack from the Congressional followers
of Israel. And the administration’s posture on lifting sanctions
is hamstrung by existing laws that were passed on the demand
of Israel and by the fear of the ferocious attack from the same
Congressional camp followers to any effort to get around
those restrictions.
The power of the Israeli lobby is certainly part of the
administration’s calculation in insisting that Iran must comply
with US demands on the enrichment capacity and give up its
aspiration for the removal of all US unilateral sanctions as
well as UN Security Council sanctions.
Netanyahu’s approaching speech to Congress is a reflection of
the increasingly open interference in US politics by Israel and
its political forces in the United States. In the most recent
manifestation of the subservient character of a large
proportion of the US Congress in relation to Israel, Senator
Lindsey Graham (R.-S.C.) told Netanyahu, “The Congress
will follow your lead” on Iran and would demand a role in the
final settlement. The phenomenon is a direct result of the
large campaign contributions that go into the coffers of those
in Congress who “follow the lead” of Israel and to the
opponents of those who fail to do so. Such is the power
wielded by AIPAC that very few dare to stand up to its
threats.
There are limits to what an otherwise obsequious Congress
will do for Netanyahu and Israel. Many members will not vote
for a measure that can be credibly presented as an incitement
to US war. Nevertheless, we are still likely to see a revealing
contrast next week as Netanyahu is lionized (again) by the US
Congress even as he is under fire in his own election
campaign for his clumsy and possibly costly insult to the
Obama administration.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and
historian writing on US national security policy. His latest
book, “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran
Nuclear Scare,” was published in February 2014.