Is Israel's Netanyahu trying to get Romney elected?

The Israeli prime minister and the GOP nominee are old friends. Netanyahu and Obama? Frenemies, at best

Mitt Romney meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in July: The two worked together at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s.
(Image credit: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have a famously testy relationship, particularly when it comes to Obama's hesitance to back a potential Israeli attack on Iran, says Glenn Thrush at Politico. But both camps had informally agreed to keep any disagreements private — until Netanyahu slapped Obama over his Iran policy this week and let leak that Obama had declined to meet with the Israeli leader next week. (The White House denies a meeting was ever requested). Netanyahu's jabs at Obama, which may be intended to move the needle in a tight presidential election, haven't gone unnoticed, either here or in Israel. "Which regime is more important to overthrow — the one in Washington, or in Tehran?" Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz pointedly asked Netanyahu on Wednesday, warning that "meddling in internal U.S. affairs" is dangerous. Is Netanyahu trying to throw the U.S. election to his longtime friend Mitt Romney — who Netanyahu worked with in Boston in the 1970s?

Yes. And Bibi needs to butt out: Netanyahu is making "an unprecedented attempt by a putative American ally to influence a U.S. presidential campaign," says Joe Klein at TIME. Such foreign meddling should be "intolerable for any patriotic American," as should Bibi's other goal: "Trying to shove us into a war of choice in a region where far too many Americans have already died needlessly." Real friends don't do that, and Romney needs to let his old pal know that "his interventions into our political process and policy-making are not welcome."

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