Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu misleadingly conflated Iran and ISIS as two fanatical powers locked in a "game of thrones" for world leadership of the extremist Jihadist movement. Netanyahu referred to Iran and ISIS as competing "for the crown of militant Islam." He further exclaimed that, "In this deadly game of thrones, there is no place for America or Israel."
The Iranian situation is complex. For well over a decade, the Western powers (the P5+1, or the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) have been trying to prevent Iran from enriching its uranium stockpiles to weapons grade nuclear material in order to build a nuclear bomb. But Netanyahu's "contribution" to this effort has been to undermine not only Obama's attempts to reach an agreement with Iran but also his presidency by playing the Republican dominated US Congress off against the Administration and the Democratic Party which Netanyahu and his fellow Likudniks clearly despise.
It is obvious that John Boehner sees in Netanyahu's speech, an opportunity to weaken not only the President's diplomatic efforts but his image to the US public which the GOP has always tried to show as being "weak on foreign affairs" and "soft on our enemies" such as fundamentalist Islam. In this way, both Netanyahu and the US GOP have a common interest in destroying Obama's presidency and the efficacy of the Democratic Party. This episode is more of an egregious example of undue Israeli influence on US politics than AIPAC's lobbying (which is really just a matter of pushing on an already open door to politicians on both sides of the aisle. Both parties believe for a number of reasons that it is in the US "national interest" to have a "special relationship" with Israel despite that country's dismal human rights record and its utter failure to achieve any of the stated goals of the peace process (namely, a just and lasting two state solution) which instead turned out to be a shift from outright foreign military occupation to the current Apartheid arrangement in the West Bank.
The real game of thrones is not so much for the leadership of the world jihadist movement-which doesn't involve Iran at all-but between a neoconservative coalition involving US and Israeli far right conservatives vs. everyone else! The utter irrationality of Netanyahu is evident in his attempts to goad the US into a highly destructive conflagration in the Persian Gulf despite the majority of expert opinion opposing such a disastrous venture favoring instead continued diplomatic engagement. Late in 2012, when he was US Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta publically asserted that if Iran were to be attacked, "...the United States would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, striking our ships, striking our military bases, and there are economic consequences to that attack....which could impact a very fragile economy in Europe and a fragile economy here in the United States. The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret." While Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell when he was US Secretary of State, asserted back in 2012 that there was basically no respected US military expert opinion supporting military strikes against Iran citing instead a litany of opinions that saw such a strike as initiating another war worse than any we have had in recent history that would lead inevitably to a nuclear armed Iran in the midst of a far more unstable Middle East.
Furthermore, in late 2012, the Mossad, Israel's chief intelligence organization, determined that the Iranians were far from being able to build a nuclear bomb. According to a UK Guardian report Netayahu's shrill statements at the time in response to US engagement with Iran on the nuclear issue were not based on updated intelligence. The Guardian asserted;
The Mossad briefing about Iran’s nuclear programme in 2012 was in stark contrast to the alarmist tone set by Netanyahu, who has long presented the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat to Israel and a huge risk to world security. The Israeli prime minister told the UN: “By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move[d] on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”...Behind the scenes, Mossad took a different view. In a report shared with South African spies on 22 October 2012 – but likely written earlier – it conceded that Iran was “working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate, such as enrichment reactors, which will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given”. But the report also states that Iran “does not appear to be ready” to enrich uranium to the higher levels necessary for nuclear weapons. To build a bomb requires enrichment to 90%. Mossad estimated that Iran then had “about 100kg of material enriched to 20%” (which was later diluted or converted under the terms of the 2013 Geneva agreement). Iran has always said it is developing a nuclear programme for civilian energy purposes.
In addition to this leaked military assessment of Iran's actual nuclear capabilities from Israeli intelligence itself, came another Israeli military assessment of Iran's political leadership. Contrary to Netanyahu's shrill condemnation of the newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rohani, a moderate by most accounts, as little more than Ahmadinejad lite, the assessment claims that Rohani's election in June 2013 signaled a "deep strategic change" in Iranian political leadership. According to Ha'aretz reporter, Amos Harel Israeli top military analysts tended to see Rohani "...as an authentic leader who is creating an independent power center." Most of Israel's top brass see Rohani's government as a potential "peace partner" and one that ultimately values good diplomatic relations with the West. It is also the case that Meir Dagan, former Mossad Chief who served for eight years in that post, strongly disagrees with Netanyahu's assessments of both Iran's nuclear capabilities and the nature of Iran's top leadership. Mr. Dagan has been evading Israel's press censors to bring his view to the public so that it can be seen in stark contrast to that of the current Prime Minister whose war drive he, and many other Israeli experts, openly disdain.
So what was the real purpose of Netanyahu's visit, at the unilateral invitation of House speaker John Boehner? It was pure political partisanship at its most vile...and most unprecedentedly hostile. William Saletan, a freelance writer characterizes Netanyahu's visit and speech to the GOP dominated Congress in this way;
Nothing like this has ever happened before. The opposition party is convening a special session of Congress so that a foreign leader, on the floor of our national legislature, can rebuke the foreign policy of our president...Boehner made clear that the invitation’s purpose was to counter Obama’s message and challenge his policies... “I did not consult with the White House. The Congress can make this decision on its own,” the speaker declared...The White House, blindsided, expressed its dismay. “The typical protocol would suggest that the leader of a country would contact the leader of another country when he’s traveling there,” said Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest. “So this particular event seems to be a departure from that protocol.”
The tone of Netanyahu's speech and the message to Congress was to push for new and greater sanctions against Iran, sanctions that Obama has repeatedly said will scuttle the difficult and complex negotiations while polarizing the world community at a time when the President's efforts need greater support. The effect of renewed sanctions, it is justly feared will result in the kind of stalemate and political polarization that would make a military strike more likely which is exactly the Israeli Prime Minister's goal. It is a dangerous one for all powers in the region, including Israel, and for the US as well.
What is so disturbing about this is the Chutzpah of a foreign leader to so manipulate the foreign policy of the US on such a vital issue. If the GOP goes along with it than it will be their fault and not Israel's because the GOP has long expressed its willingness to put their political partisanship before the national interest and the will of the American people as well as do anything to destroy Obama's presidency regardless of the consequences. This unfortunate episode also gives credibility to the absurd, paleoconservative and anti-Semitic claim that Israel is actually in control of US foreign policy as shown by the willingness of the US to invade and occupy Iraq over a decade ago. Really? Is the UK also in the grip of the "world Jewish conspiracy?" And what about the oil, nearly $140 billion in reconstruction contracts mostly for US corporations, and military-industrial complex in general (not to mention the geostrategic hegemony afforded by occupying a strategic region like the Persian Gulf)? The Iraq War was one instance whereby an entirely US/UK policy was made to look like an Israeli one despite obvious overwhelming non-Jewish special interests in the war and occupation.
One of the dangers of Netanyahu's game of thrones, aside from the obvious hazards of a unilateral US military strike on Iran in which a highly destructive and destabilizing war would spread throughout the entire region, is that it would deepen the false perception that a gaggle of interloping neoconservatives have taken over the State Department and are now in fact in charge of US foreign policy. This is of course total nonsense! There are broad interests in the US foreign policy, industrial and military establishment, almost all of it non-Jewish and non-Israeli, whose political and economic interests would be served by the neo-conservative agenda. US imperialism is not new. The control of a vital, oil rich region is certainly seen by many US policy makers as desirable and in the US national interest.
The mistake would be to see US dominance of the Middle East as an Israeli agenda imposed on the United States. In fact, it is an entirely US agenda. A powerful Israel is part of that agenda. Israel is powerful and well armed only because US decision makers made it that way. Israel, some time after the 1973 War, came to be seen as a strategic asset in the region. The US/Israeli "special relationship" was formed in conjunction with the independent assessment of US vital strategic interests in the region by US policy makers. What appears to be an alien neo-conservative "hijacking" of US policy in the region is actually a purely US effort that is consistent with the entire history of US expansionism and its role as the world's policeman.
But Netanyahu's imposition on a US Administration, albeit with the approval and assistance of the US GOP, gives the false impression that Israel is running US policy, at least in the Middle East. All the evidence to the contrary appears to be belied by his current arrogant behavior in a very powerful public forum. Israel is home to billions in US (and other) direct foreign investment, engages in billions more annually in trade, is a font of high tech innovation, tests US weapons systems in live battle against the weapons systems of enemy countries (such as US F16 fighters destroying more than 80 Soviet MiG combat aircraft over the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in 1982), and serves, in the words of former Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig, as a giant US aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean. The US also has important allies in the region besides Israel such as Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Many of these states also get lavish military aid. But when an Israeli prime minister behaves as does Netanyahu, it is very hard to convincingly make the case that US foreign policy in the Middle East is made without outside interference.
It was hard enough to convince people that regime change in Iraq was a purely American idea. It will be impossible to convince anyone that military strikes against Iran was similarly as American as apple pie, especially when most of the US public and leadership want to continue diplomacy amid a shrill and aggressive campaign for war from the leader of a small but powerful ally. If Netanyahu gets his way and a disastrous war in the Persian Gulf results, as it surely will, in massive destruction, record high gas prices, incredibly high civilian casualties in the region and thousands of American soldiers returning in body bags it's game over for Israel...and the entire American Jewish community! It is a bitter historic irony that Israel, which was thought to bring unshakable safety to Jews all over the world, can possibly result in the exact opposite. Fortunately, there is much dissent all over, not least of all within the US and Israeli Jewish communities, against Netanyahu's dangerous folly! Let's all hope that the cooler heads prevail!