Netanyahu: Trying to influence the U.S. election?

The Israeli prime minister's recent statements seem designed to sway public opinion.

Iran’s nuclear facilities may well be next, said Andrew Sullivan in TheDailyBeast.com, but Benjamin Netanyahu’s first goal is clearly to “blow up the U.S. election.” The Israeli prime minister recently chastised the White House for not setting a firm “red line” for Iran’s nuclear program that would result in a war if crossed. This week Netanyahu doubled down, with two inflammatory appearances on U.S. Sunday talk shows. Using a clumsy football analogy clearly tailored to a U.S. audience, Netanyahu warned that Iran was already in “the last 20 yards” in its drive for a nuclear touchdown, and might be just six months from making a bomb. That bomb, he said pointedly, might wind up in the hands of Iran’s terrorist surrogates, and “the kind of fanaticism you see storming your embassies would have a nuclear weapon.” Netanyahu’s friend, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has sought to capitalize on the rift, charging that Obama was snubbing the Israeli prime minister and throwing Israel “under the bus.” Never before has an American politician sided with a foreign leader in a conflict with our government, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times.A war with Iran would have grave, unpredictable consequences, and plunge our economy back into recession. Obama is right to resist, and he “should indeed set a red line—warning Netanyahu to stop interfering in American elections.”

Netanyahu’s behavior “looks a lot like meddling,” said Jeffrey Goldberg in TheAtlantic.com, but I don’t think his goal is to “tip the election to Mitt Romney.” A veteran of countless campaigns himself, the Israeli leader can read polls as well as anyone, and has resigned himself to the idea that Obama will very likely win a second term. So “why risk alienating” him? He genuinely fears that Obama “won’t actually stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon,” because he’ll decide that the costs of doing so are too great.

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