What is in Netanyahu’s interests is often not always in America’s interests. I will show that Netanyahu is not worthy of our trust or respect. Israel and America, these are two sovereign nations. Yes, I might like the idea of the Queen of England, through her Parliament, being able to remove the president of the U.S. (akin to an Oligarch funding his own president), but would that make me a good American, assuming I needed to be seen as a good American? The Iran deal comes to mind as does the illegal acquiring of land, via Jewish settlements, in the West Bank. Netanyahu has been determined to stop and or derail the Iran nuclear deal, destabilize Iraq, and he is certainly not shy about making a fool of himself in the process. But big money ensures that he never gets called on it.
In 1992, Netanyahu advised the Israeli Knesset that Iran was “three to five years” away from reaching nuclear weapons capability, and that this threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S.” Three years later evidently Iran had made zero progress because—
In 1995 (three years later), he wrote a book, Fighting Terrorism asserting that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in “three to five years.”
In 1996, Netanyahu, now hedging, said to a joint session of Congress:
“If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close
After 1996, he seems to get bored by Iran’s lack of progress and starts talking nonsense about Iraq going nuclear.
In 2002, he is back again testifying in front of Congress—garbling all things nuclear, claiming that Iraq’s nonexistent nuclear program was in fact so advanced that the country was now operating “centrifuges the size of washing machines.” This was all part of a drumbeat where George W Bush and lap dog Blair (encouraged by Israel) effectively become war criminals by launching an invasion of Iraq based upon false pretenses. While Netanyahu may have been piddling in excitement, this was hardly in America’s best interests.
In 2009, having helped create all the disasters of Iraq imploding thus strengthening Iran, the seeds of ISIS, and the Syrian civil war while showing no chagrin, we find a leaked U.S. State Department diplomatic cable that described Netanyahu advising a delegation of U.S. congressmen that Iran was “probably one or two years away” from developing weapons capability.
Later in 2009, now Israeli Prime Minister, “Iran has the capability now to make one bomb,” adding that alternatively, “they could wait and make several bombs in a year or two.”
In 2010, Netanyahu is back, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” adding, “that’s what is happening in Iran.”
In 2012, evidently Iran is just a few months away. Later that year, using a cartoon of a Bomb the new timeframe of “within a year” was shared.
Israeli intelligence begs to differ. I am sure they dislike being made to look like buffoons. In 2011, Meir Dagan the retiring head of Mossad, relayed the summary of the Israeli intelligence knowledge, contrary to Netanyahu’s repeated statements at the time, an Iranian nuclear weapon was not imminent, and launching an attack on Iran could end up encouraging the development of such a weapon.
Netanyahu attracts the support of what I call the Israeli supremacists while the U.S. alt-right celebrates attacking brown people (in this case Arabs, etc.), it is not in America’s interests to go willy nilly after brown people. Yes, Arab countries do plenty of reprehensible things; unlike Israel, they seem to really struggle with democracy and civil rights. Further, Arab countries still officially state Israel should not exist, but mainly as a bargaining chip and as populist vote-grabbing rhetoric. But that is why everyone has diplomats and intelligence services to clean up the mess of low-life politicians.
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