Now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are pushing for a military strike against Iran, even if that strike has to take place before the Nov. 6 U.S. elections, the White House is going out of its way to try to diffuse the situation. Their latest attempt comes in the form of White House spokesman Jay Carney’s suggestion that the U.S. will know when Iran has a bomb and will therefore let Israel know when actions need to be taken.
Said Carney: “I would…say that we have eyes–we have visibility into the program, and we would know if and when Iran made what’s called a breakout move toward acquiring a weapon.”
In response to these things, Israeli officials pointed out that the U.S. “didn’t see 9/11 coming,” thus the Israelis don’t believe it’s unreasonable to presume the current administration is overlooking the danger facing the Jewish state at this very moment. Moreover, Netanyahu made it clear that Israel, rather than the U.S., is the nation that will pay the price for a miscalculation here: “Thwarting Iran amounts to thwarting a plan to destroy the Jewish people.”
Netanyahu’s concerns are only heightened by the fact that President Obama has yet to promise to attack Iran if diplomacy fails. Instead, Obama has simply re-stated his commitment to diplomacy regardless of what the intelligence reports indicate.
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