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It is a safe bet that Netanyahu is wryly amused at such obsequious buffoonery. But his impression of Obama's backbone--or lack thereof--is key. The Israeli Prime Minister must be drawing some lessons from Obama's aversion to leveraging the $3 billion a year the U.S. gives to Israel. Why doesn't Obama simply pick up the phone and warn me himself, Netanyahu might well be thinking.
Is Obama so deathly afraid of the powerful Likud Lobby that he cannot bring himself to call me? Is the President afraid his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, might listen in, and then leak the conversation to neoconservative pundits like the Washington Post's Dana Milbank?
Benjamin Netanyahu has had ample time to size up our President. Their initial encounter in May 2009 reminded me very much of the disastrous meeting in Vienna between another young American president and Nikita Khrushchev in early June 1961. The Soviets took the measure of President John Kennedy, and one result was the Cuban missile crisis, bringing the world as close as it has ever come, before or since, to nuclear destruction.
The Israeli Prime Minister has found it possible to thumb his nose at Obama's repeated pleas for a halt in construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories--without consequence. Moreover, Netanyahu has watched Obama cave in time after time--on domestic, as well as international issues.
Netanyahu styles himself as sitting in the catbird's seat of the relationship, largely because of the Likud Lobby's unparalleled influence with U.S. lawmakers and opinion makers -- not to mention the entr????e the Israelis enjoy to the chief executive himself by having one of their staunchest allies, Rahm Emanuel, in position as White House chief of staff. In the intelligence business, we might call that an "agent of influence."
Emanuel's father, Benjamin Emanuel, was born in Jerusalem and served in the Irgun, the pre-independence Zionist guerrilla organization. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Rahm Emanuel, then in his early 30s, traveled to Israel as a civilian volunteer to work with the Israeli Defense Forces. He served in one of the IDF's northern bases.
Mullen's Worries
Netanyahu is supremely confident of the solidity of his position with the movers and shakers in Congress, Washington opinion makers, and even within the Obama administration. And he gives off signs of being singularly underwhelmed by the President.
These factors enhance the possibility Netanyahu will opt for the kind of provocation that would confront Obama with a Hobson's choice regarding whether to join an Israeli attack on Iran.
And so Mullen continues to worry -- not only about "unintended consequences," but about intended consequences, as well. The most immediate of these could involve mousetrapping Obama into committing U.S. forces to war provoked with Iran.
And for those fond of saying that "everything is on the table," be advised that this would go in spades in this context.
Very little seems outlandish these days. Remember Seymour Hersh's report about Cheney's office conjuring up plots as to how best to trigger a war with Iran?
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