Bibi the Irrelevant

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One is really beginning to feel almost sorry for Bibi Netanyahu. The sharp-elbowed Israeli jefe was able to shove aside some poor diminutive Franco-African chap and inject himself into the front line at a Charlie Hebdo demonstration in Paris, back in January, when Charlie Hebdo was still a thing. But his more recent attempt to crash the party, at a conversation among real Great Powers, about Iran, fizzled badly.

After the recent announcement of the tentative nuke agreement with Iran, the Israeli plug-ugly took it upon himself to insist that any such agreement had to include some kind of recognition of Israel on Iran’s part.

Now of course one of the obvious implications of any actual substantive agreement with Iran, on the part of the Powers, would be that Israel and its mad projects were left out in the cold. So Bibi’s petulant demand for the top brick of the chimney was manifestly ridiculous. But he made it anyway. Even with a weatherman, this blockhead doesn’t seem to know which way the wind is blowing.

Amazingly enough, the US State Department, no less, sent Bibi away with a contemptuous dismissal, entrusted to a rather junior porte-parole named Marie Harf. Hardly anybody reported this, except Fox News, and even they played it pretty straight. Ms Harf said explicitly that the question of Israel was in no way on the table in the discussions with Iran, and between the lines, that Bibi could bugger off.

God, that must have been fun. Lucky Marie Harf.

5 thoughts on “Bibi the Irrelevant”

  1. Came across an interesting comment on a former British diplomat’s blog:

    The reason British policy towards Nazi Germany changed so abruptly and radically in the spring of 1939 is that Nazi Germany’s bad faith and misdeeds had become so manifest that British public opinion would no longer tolerate a continuation of the policy of appeasement.

    I think Israel’s bad faith and misdeeds are now headed for a similar tipping point.

    And, quite coincidentally elsewhere there’s discussion of a recent book by an Israeli academic of bad-faith as official policy practiced by generations of leaders of the Jewish State:

    Israel used excruciatingly-protracted talks with both sides to convince the UN and the US that it was interested in and working toward a negotiated settlement while instead it was doing everything possible to delay and avoid any commitment to one. This diplomatic strategy was aptly described by Israel’s foreign minister, Abba Eban, as tahksisanut or unstraightforwardness. Raz concludes Israel was never willing to trade captured land for peace and used a “foreign policy of deception” to hide that fact from its allies, mainly the US, which it feared would force it to return the captured lands, and refuse to sell it the sophisticated aircraft and weaponry it craved. Raz argues that Israel’s entire approach to settlement negotiations from 1967 through the Oslo Accord of 1993 to the present day followed Eban’s strategy of diplomatic tahksisanut. The goal has always been to delay and avoid an agreement until the number of illegal settlements and settlers in the Occupied Territories created facts on the ground that would make the permanency of Greater Israel a fait accompli. The collapse and failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2013-14 peace talks reflects the continuing success of tahksisanut, of Israeli duplicity.

  3. He’s a drowning man. All of his maneuvers, including when he aped giving a State of the Union address, reek of desperation. I am, however, glad he won his election, for all of the obvious reasons. He is the true face of Israel, and Herzog-Livni would’ve been a temporary wet blanket or sedative.

    His, and Israel’s, irrelevance in the Iran talks has been a sight to behold. I’ll cop to wishful thinking, but I do believe change is in the air.

  4. It would almost be better if Iran came out and admitted–truly or otherwise–that, yep, we already have a nuke. Bought it from the Russians. Not to mention chemical weapons (on loan to Syria). Not to mention biological weapons (Ebola?). Not to mention EM pulse, to keep the preppers happy. It would spare us another Friedman tome, if nothing else.

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