After Years Of Pressing The US For War With Iran, Netanyahu Tells The US To Keep Israel Out Of The Conflict

For years, Netanyahu has pressed the US to go to war with Iran. Under the Obama administration, his requests were mostly ignored as Obama refused to cave to pressure from lobbying groups such as AIPAC.

However, the Trump administration has make a complete turn and gone even further than any president before, including Bush II, even to the concern of some Israeli politicians. The Trump administration even has had members come out and suggest that America has to go to war with Iran because it is God’s will that she would be the savior of Israel.

Netanyahu so far is getting his wish. War with Iran has never been closer. One would think that with all of the lobbying that he and other groups have done for this, that Israel would be ready for war. However, it has been reported that Netanyahu is in a state of panic, begging to keep Israel out of the conflict:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened urgent consultations with Israel’s security chiefs this week amid the escalating tensions between Iran and the United States, and reportedly urged them to do their utmost to ensure that Israel is not dragged into the fraught situation.

At his meeting with the security chiefs, Netanyahu ordered the appropriate precautions be taken to deal with any potential escalation, and also called for ongoing, close intelligence monitoring of the surging tensions between Washington and Tehran, a TV report said Wednesday. But he also told the top officers “to take steps to separate Israel from these developments” and to work “at all cost” to keep Israel out of the situation, Israel’s Channel 13 news reported, citing senior Israeli officials.

Despite various threats by Iranian leaders against Israel, the assessment at the meeting was that there is no immediate concern that Israel will be directly targeted — including by rocket fire from pro-Iranian militias in Syria or Iraq, the report said.

Israel, it added, has been maintaining close contact with the Trump administration in recent days, with Netanyahu speaking by telephone with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the Israeli national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat liaising with his US counterpart John Bolton.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not deny the report but would not comment on it. US officials told the TV station that Netanyahu and Pompeo are in frequent contact, often about Iran.

Iran’s defense minister said earlier Wednesday his country would overpower the US-Israel alliance in the region. “We will defeat the American-Zionist front,” Amir Hatami told a gathering of military intelligence officials on Wednesday, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Iran’s military preparedness, Hatami said, was “at its highest point,” despite “the most difficult conditions” imposed by US sanctions. “We will be the final victors” in the standoff, he insisted, and “will defeat the United States.”

He blamed the sanctions and heightened tensions on Iran’s “defeat of the heretics” — a reference to the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq, which Iranian officials have claimed was founded and backed by the US.

Tensions in the region have risen sharply in recent weeks as US sanctions on Iran, reimposed gradually in the wake of the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal last year, began to take their toll, pushing the Iranian economy into crisis.

Last week, Iran warned it would begin enriching uranium at higher levels in 60 days if world powers failed to negotiate new terms for the deal.

On Wednesday, US officials announced they were evacuating nonessential American personnel from Iraq, a day after Saudi oil facilities were attacked by Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen, and three days after four oil tankers — two of which were Saudi — were damaged as they lay off the coast of the United Arab Emirates by what Gulf officials described as sabotage. Of the other two tankers, one was Norwegian and the other Emirati.

Israel was reported last week to have warned the US that Iran was contemplating targeting Saudi oil production facilities. An unsourced Channel 13 report said the Iranians were “considering various aggressive acts” against American or American-allied targets. Tehran had looked at targeting American bases in the Gulf, but that had been deemed too drastic. The main target they were interested in was “Saudi oil production facilities,” the TV report said.

Last week, top officials in the Trump administration warned that Washington believed Iran was plotting some sort of attack in the Gulf region, perhaps targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria.

To meet the threat, the Pentagon has accelerated the deployment of an aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf and accompanied it with several B-52 bombers, a Patriot missile battery and an amphibious assault ship.

The stepped-up deployment and heightened rhetoric has led to fears in capitals around the world of a possible military confrontation breaking out between Washington and Tehran. (source, source)

This is the same Netanyahu who bragged, directly paraphrasing the words of Adolph Hitler, that the “weak” should be slaughtered by the “strong”:

It is ironic that Netanyahu, who insists that Iran is such an existential threat and has been pressing the US for many years to engage in military conflict with Iran, when the moment for actual conflict comes, wants to have the US do the fighting but make sure that Israel is not involved in it at all.

Does this not seem strange, given his position in the Israeli military, which so often touts its capabilities before the world? Would they not be ready to assist America- Israel’s “greatest ally” -in a conflict they have lobbied in favor of for so long?

Is the Israeli military not as good as they claim to be?

Is it perhaps that Israel wants a conflict, but that they want America go to war on behalf of their benefit, that Americans would suffer and die for them, but Israeli governmental, political, and business interests would reap the spoils of such a conflict?

Could it be another possibility?

Regardless of what the answer is, the fact is that it is quite strange that Netanyahu would seek out a conflict with a nation- in this case Iran -for so many years, and then when the time for conflict approaches, he would insist on seeming to shield himself from the effects of what he wants.

One cannot “have (his) cake and eat it too.” All actions in life have consequences, and they are a part of making decisions. One cannot, for example, claim to be a Christian and continue to live an unrepentant and indulgent life with no desire to repent of wanton sin, as the two are opposed. Likewise, one cannot claim to want a conflict with another person and press his friends into conflict with him but then when the time for conflict comes, to back out and say “I do not want to get hurt, so you will fight for my interests and I will sit back and watch and return when it is over.” Such a man who would have an attitude like this is not a friend, but rather an opportunist looking to use another person for what he wants.

It is indeed food for thought.