Trash Talk
Diplomacy, US-Israel Relations, and Iran
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This is a slightly abridged version of the original
article.
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President
Obama sees Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as standing in the
way of American détente with Iran.
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On October 28, 2014, the conduct of the foreign relations of the United
States of America reached a low point when an anonymous "senior Obama
administration official" went on public record in an interview
with the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine and
called the Prime Minister of Israel a "chickenshit."
In the vernacular of American sports language,
perhaps familiar to sports fans in Israel as well, this was an example of
"trash talk" — the kind of insult intended to undermine the
self-respect and focus of an opponent.
Yet it was far worse than that. It was an
expression of contempt, disdain and yes, let's be frank, hatred directed at
one of the closest, most loyal and important of America's allies. It is
inconceivable that an aide to the President of the United States would go
on record with such language about the heads of state of allies such as
Australia, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan. Yet the
anonymous aide did so regarding the leader of the Jewish state.
In the uproar that followed, the White House had a
deputy national security spokesman issue a statement saying "such comments are
inappropriate and counter-productive." Secretary of State John Kerry
rightly told a Washington gathering that the remarks were
"disgraceful, unacceptable, damaging." He also phoned Prime
Minister Netanyahu personally to apologize.
Obama did not call Netanyahu to
apologize, fire the offending official or even reveal his or her name.
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The most important thing to keep in mind about the
"chickenshit" comment is what President Obama did not do in the
aftermath. He did not call Prime Minister Netanyahu to apologize, nor did
he address the issue publicly himself. He did not reveal who the offending
official was, though he surely must know his or her identity. Last, and
perhaps most importantly, he did not fire this aide for using gutter
language in public to refer to Netanyahu.
What the President did not do sent the
message that he shared the views expressed in the Goldberg interview. The
President was willing to use such "trash talk" to refer to
Netanyahu, but he did so via an anonymous member of his staff. It strains
credulity that a senior member of his staff would go on the record with
such comments without the permission of the President himself.
What the President did not do
sent the message that the President of the United States shared the views
expressed in the Goldberg interview.
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For six years, Barack Obama has insisted that the
policy of the United States remains that of preventing Iran from attaining
nuclear weapons. For that same six years, the negotiating position of the
United States has moved closer to those of Iran. As a result, there are
serious, well-informed people in Washington who believe that the actual
policy of the administration is to accept an Iranian bomb and then
institute a policy of deterrence.
During these same six years, Obama has made clear
to Netanyahu that he opposes an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear
facilities. Netanyahu, both due to the advice of his own military leaders
and in order to preserve the alliance with the United States, has refrained
from launching such an attack even as he has repeatedly — and rightly —
insisted that an Iran with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to
Israel. Netanyahu has been patient even as the Iranian threat has grown
while doing what he can rhetorically to warn against complacency and
wishful thinking. His reward for these six years of patience was to be
called a "chickenshit" in public by one of Barack Obama's closest
aides.
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Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations during his
speech to a joint session of Congress in 2011.
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Now Jeffrey Goldberg has helped things to go from
bad to worse. This past week, on January 27th, International Holocaust
Remembrance Day, he published " The
Netanyahu Disaster". The journalist has concluded that, in
addition to his other faults, the Prime Minister of Israel is incompetent
because "the manner and execution and overall tone-deafness of
Netanyahu's recent ploy," that is his acceptance of House Speaker John
Boehner's invitation to speak to a Joint Session of the United States
Congress without discussing it with the Obama administration, "suggest
that he — and his current ambassador [Ronald Dermer] — don't understand how
to manage Israel's relationships in Washington. Netanyahu wants a role in
shaping the Iranian nuclear agreement, should one materialize. His recent actions suggest that he doesn't quite know
what he's doing."
In October, Goldberg became the vehicle for the
Obama administration to label Netanyahu a coward. Now he concludes that the
Israeli Prime Minister does not know what he is doing in foreign policy.
Goldberg is a barometer for some of those American Jewish journalists,
intellectuals and politicians, who genuinely care about Israel's security,
are worried that Iran is moving to acquire nuclear weapons and are reliable
supporters of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. As Obama gives every
indication of wanting to make a deal with Iran that will make it possible
for it to acquire nuclear weapons in the not-too-distant future, it has
become very difficult to reconcile this mixture of views. So as push comes
to shove, Goldberg and other center-left opinion makers place most of the
blame for American-Israeli tensions on Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Compared to the question of whether or not Iran is
going to acquire nuclear weapons and thus whether or not it is likely that
a nuclear attack on the state of Israel will occur in the coming years, the
issue of whether or not Israel's Prime Minister should accept an invitation
to address a Joint Session of the United States Congress is a trifling,
insignificant matter. After his failure to fire the official who made the
"chickenshit" comment to Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama is in
no position to lecture Benjamin Netanyahu about protocol and proper
procedure, or to express unhappiness that Israel's Prime Minister wants to
take his case to the Congress.
Western leaders do not like to be
told that they are naïve about Iran, substitute wishful thinking for
realism, and refuse to take the ideology of the Iranian government
seriously.
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Benjamin Netanyahu is an irritant to President
Obama and to all the diplomats and political leaders in the P5+ 1 group who
have steadily weakened the Western negotiating position with Iran. These
leaders do not like to be told that they are naïve about Iran, that they
substitute wishful thinking for realism and that they refuse to take the
ideology of the Iranian government seriously. They do not like to be told
that their desire for a deal with Iran is clouding their better judgment.
They do not like to have their judgment questioned in public.
Netanyahu has done all of those things, but always
the substance of the issue is the survival of Israel. Ultimately it is
this, his willingness to challenge political judgment, that is so
infuriating to Obama and to the European heads of state pushing for what he
regards as a bad deal with Iran. It is Netanyahu's firm and polite
impertinence and his willingness to dissent that led to the insults and
gutter language from Obama's staff member.
For the Obama administration, the most infuriating
thing about Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the issue of Iran's nuclear
weapons program is that he continues to insist that only the toughest
economic sanctions and a credible threat of a military strike are going to
convince the Islamic Republic to turn away from nuclear weapons. President
Obama's declared policy remains prevention of an Iranian nuclear bomb
because it would constitute a grave threat to the United States and to many
of our allies, most of all but by no means exclusively, to Israel.
It is vital for allies to present a
united front to the real adversary, the Iranian regime and its search for
the ultimate weapon.
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Insofar as it concerns the possibility of Iranian
nuclear weapons, the national security interests of the United States and
Israel are identical. Both have the same declared policy of preventing Iran
from getting the bomb, not of deterring Iran once it has it. Prime Minister
Netanyahu has been an irritant to President Obama and the P5 plus 1
countries that have allowed Iran to drag negotiations on and on while it
works on the bomb. Yet Netanyahu is right on the substance of the matter.
In return for his excessive patience with the Iranians, President Obama has
little to show for his efforts except a growing number of Iranian
centrifuges.
The disastrous October interview given by one of
Obama's own staff members deeply exacerbated tensions between close allies.
Statesmanship in the White House calls for welcoming the Prime Minister to
Washington in March and consigning the sordid chapter of trash talk
diplomacy to the past. President Obama may be remembered as the President
on whose watch Iran got the bomb—or as the one who prevented that from
happening. As counter-intuitive as it may sound in the current climate, the
White House should reach out both to Netanyahu and to his foreign policy
critics in Congress. It needs them both badly if it is to be able to apply
sufficient pressure on Tehran that is indispensable for achieving a policy
of prevention by peaceful means. Only if the President is willing to turn
down a bad deal with Iran will there be a chance of success via diplomacy
and sanctions short of war. Now it is vital for allies to present a united
front to the real adversary, the Iranian regime and its search for the
ultimate weapon.
Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished
University Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland
in College Park and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. His recent works
include: Nazi Propaganda for the
Arab World (2009), and The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during
World War II and the Holocaust (2006).
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