How Will Benjamin Netanyahu Confront Iran's Charm Offensive?
Hassan Rouhani's Tweet Detente Puts Israel in a Bind
By Leonard Fein
Published September 20, 2013, issue of September 27, 2013.
A nasty altercation looms. No issue has been more central to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy and his rhetoric than the threat of Iran. For years now, Iran has been the touchstone against which all else has been measured, as also the heart of Netanyahu’s representation to the nations of the world. Now comes President Hassan Rouhani, an entirely different Iranian leader from his predecessors, a leader with whom President Obama is inclined to seek at least a modus vivendi if not a full-blown reconciliation.
We know already from his intemperate reaction to Rouhani’s evident moderation that Netanyahu will not adjust easily to the shift. Whether or not Rouhani actually tweeted Rosh Hashanah greetings to Jews — there’s controversy about that — it is for sure that Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, did send such greetings. But Netanyahu is not merely skeptical; he is dismissive. “The Iranian regime will be judged only by its actions and not by its greetings,” Netanyahu has said. He added that the greetings’ “only purpose is to distract attention from the fact” that despite the election of Rouhani, considered a moderate, “it continues to enrich uranium and build a plutonium reactor for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons that will threaten the state of Israel and the entire world.”
There’s a method to diplomacy: If you’re given an opening, use it. But for Netanyahu to use the apparent opening would mean his letting go, at least tentatively, of the issue that has defined him more than any other, learning to sing a new song. So he will not credit Rouhani for saying, as the Iranian leader did in a lengthy NBC interview with Ann Curry, that “We have time and again said that under no circumstances would we seek any weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, nor will we ever.” Nor, presumably, will the neocons — yes, the neocons, resuscitated — for whom conflict is an aphrodisiac.
Déjà vu? Are we once more about to be trapped into a brittle war-like stance? No Iraq this time — been there, done that — but lots of pushing and shoving and nastiness. And push and shove hard enough, you’ll find that you’ve stumbled into something not fully intended.
Read more:
http://forward.com/articles/184267/how-will-benjamin-netanyahu-confront-irans-charm-o/#ixzz2fTk8jXwr
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