A forthcoming book on the Joe Biden presidency by legendary journalist Bob Woodward reports that the retiring US president was repeatedly frustrated by Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s according to Associated Press, which was given an advance copy.
You don’t say! Several leading newspapers have said as much if not worse for Biden, so it must be official.
“How Netanyahu ran rings around Biden”, headlined an op-ed in The Washington Post.
In a longer news feature, the Financial Times ran almost the exact headline at about the same time: “How Netanyahu is ‘running rings’ around Biden”. At least two columnists at The New York Times have been arguing Biden may have failed in the Middle East, but it was all with good intentions!
A coincidence? And, by the way, don’t they call that the road to hell?
Perhaps the White House has been feeding the same line to the news media to create the appearance of “diminishing responsibility” for the elderly president. Who knows what the reputational damage there would be to Biden’s legacy – or whatever is left of it – if the charges of genocide and war crimes against Israeli leaders at international courts stick? After all, his administration has been arming the Israelis and giving them diplomatic cover at every step.
Still it’s amusing to know that in private among close aides, according to Woodward’s fly-on-the-wall account, Biden often shouted obscenities against the Israeli leader. He is not the first and won’t be the last US president to do that.
Well, I guess you would too, if every time you called for restraint, the other guy lied to your face and did the opposite.
“Biden’s ‘frustrations and distrust’ of Netanyahu ‘erupted’ this past spring, Woodward writes”, according to the AP report.
Only last spring? Boy, the old man was slow.
The AP continues: “The president privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling him a ‘son of a bitch’ and a ‘bad f****** guy,’ according to the book. Biden said he felt, in Woodward’s accounting, that Netanyahu ‘had been lying to him regularly’. With Netanyahu ‘continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas’. Woodward wrote, ‘Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive US weapons shipments.’”
Therein lies the success of Netanyahu, one that people in the know in Washington know but will never say out loud. Either they have gone full Stockholm syndrome or they willingly sell out their own country’s interest for another’s.
Netanyahu may be blowing up the Middle East and heralding Armageddon. But he has the one single qualification that makes him Israel’s longest-serving leader, and that is, he knows how to play Washington like a fiddle.
US friendship has always been described as the sine qua non of Israel’s survival. But after the 1960s, the country’s survival has never been in doubt. The real issue has long been about colonising Palestinian land and dominating the region, and for that, it must have US support, which has evolved from being somewhat conditional under the Nixon-Kissinger duo to being effectively unconditional under Donald Trump and Biden. But Kamala Harris or Trump 2.0? I think we can safely predict what will happen in either case.
The US president may be kicking and screaming, but Netanyahu understands Biden will always end up exactly where he wants him to be. The more Netanyahu defies the White House and the further he escalates and expands conflicts in the Middle East, the less room there is for the Americans to pursue an independent foreign policy in the region. Now, at the threshold of a shooting war with Iran that the far-right in Israel and the crazy hawks in Washington have long wanted, Israel has effectively captured US foreign policy.
According to the Israeli news media including The Jerusalem Post, Washington has offered Israel a “compensation package” if it only attacks targets in Iran that have been mutually agreed on. The “incentive” package reportedly includes more military aid and a guarantee that the US would provide unconditional diplomatic support.
I wonder what their conversations are like: “Hey kid, just rough up the guy … OK, kill him if you insist. But please, don’t wipe out his whole family and the entire neighbourhood. In return, I will double your allowance before Christmas if you do that.”
Whether or not the report is accurate, US policy in the region is already in chaos. It has been an extraordinary capitulation by supposedly the world’s sole superpower that should bring shame to all those responsible but probably won’t. This is the state of America today – after Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and now Iran.
How extraordinary that the US is going to war against one state on behalf of a client state.
Retired maverick Republican congressman Ron Paul characterises the outrageous and dangerous situation rather well. “One of the highest-ranking officers in the US military is planning a war in a foreign country [Israel] against another foreign country [Iran] which will be fuelled by American weapons, American intelligence, and American tax dollars,” he wrote.
“This administration has even offered to ‘compensate’ Israel with even more weapons and diplomatic support if they hit targets of the US choosing and avoid others in Iran … Imagine if China sent military officials to Iran to pay Tehran to make sure some US targets were struck and others avoided. Would we consider it Iran’s war against us, or China’s war against us? Both?
“Did that foreign country – Iran – attack the United States or threaten Americans? No, it did not … The last thing we need is another war in the Middle East, especially against Iran. But make no mistake, war is what we are getting.”
What can possibly go wrong?
