Are the Israelis Arbiters of the American Presidential Election?

Five months before the presidential elections, Israel is worried about a U.S. policy considered timorous in regards to Iran — worried enough to disrupt the game. When we enter the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, which the State of Israel has built so that the horror of the Holocaust remains forever inscribed in the memory of humanity, the first theme that captures the visitor is Hitler’s obsession with eliminating the Jews, repeated frequently from the time he came to power in 1933. We know his threat was received rather indifferently by the world at that time. We would cradle ourselves after Munich into believing illusions of this dictator, then considered as just a little crazy and a pathological liar, about the ability of democracies to return to the normality of international morality. Unfortunately, we know the rest.

The Iranian Bomb Is an Endless Scare

Today, we see that the Israelis have a perhaps excessive but understandable impression that history stammers. All they need to hear is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeat in all his speeches that he wants to eliminate the Jewish state from the world map. They are obliged to note that international opinion is certainly concerned with the intent of Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, but it trusts diplomacy to neutralize this threat.

Besides, the negotiations continue, don’t they? After Baghdad on May 23, another meeting will be held in Moscow on June 18. The least we can say is that the Israeli government will review the results, if there are any, with particular attention. Prime Minister Netanyahu believes the issue is not whether Tehran will succeed in building nuclear weapons, but when the WMDs, clandestinely manufactured by Iran, will be a threat to Israel. He therefore considers that at the end of the meeting in Moscow, if without significant progress and a gesture of goodwill from Tehran, he will have a window of five months before the U.S. election to attempt a coup and destroy the nuclear facilities, which he refuses to even consider could have a civilian purpose.

Towards Support of Mitt Romney

Certainly, the Israeli prime minister has weighed and balanced the risks that he is taking involving the world and its people in the case of a solitary strike against Iran: Iranian unity renewed with nationalist purity as never before; the Islamic world in a state of excitement comparable to after the Six Day War; the West embarrassed, including its American ally; the Russians and the Chinese lunatics; and, of course, the risk of attacks against Israeli interests and citizens around the world.

But Netanyahu, an Israeli who, having spent a portion of his life in the U.S., knows it best, is led to believe that Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney when he declared recently: “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” Netanyahu is skeptical about the chances of Romney winning the White House, but remembers that after his 2008 election, Obama offered a hand to the Iranians to create more normalized relations. And Tehran took the opportunity to accelerate its nuclear program.