The Odd Couple; Conflicting Politics

"President Obama needs to convince the Israeli public to trust him. If the U.S. asks Israel to halt a military attack against Iran, it needs the trust of Israelis that when push comes to shove, the U.S. will take action."
Shlomo Brom, retired general, senior research associate, Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies

American President Barack Obama is now in Israel, for the first time making his presence there, in person. And he has been greeted with great admiring jubilation, huge pleasure and much applause by the Israeli public. Who, even if they do not 'trust' him, do admire him, and find him a likeable, albeit politically disappointing chap. Strikingly, official Israel has put on a grand reception of greeting for this American president.

Obama and Netanyahu at their press conference. Photograph: Larry Downing/Reuters

The pomp and ceremony and celebration of his arrival on Israeli soil, the pleasantries given and genuine joy evinced appear in stark contrast to the grudging and controversial manner in which the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was greeted in the United States, at the White House, where he was treated to miserably insulting social and political reproaches, left unceremoniously to his own devices while his hosts dined without him.

And while Israel is overjoyed to see this American president finally visiting, and seeing smiles all around from both president and prime minister in a relaxed environment of good friends and political think-alikes, there is that fairly obvious and somewhat obnoxious snub that occurred when the president declined the gracious invitation offered him to speak before the Knesset.

Instead, he will speak to the same demographic which in the United States helped him be elected in his first presidential round; university students. He wishes to speak to the Israeli public. To speak earnestly of the deep appreciation the United States has for the plight that Israel finds itself in, surrounded by hostile neighbours and one in particular threatening to obliterate it atomically. To do this, it is university students that have been targeted.

The direct appeal to this Israeli demographic will make great inroads in President Obama's wish to speak candidly and convincingly that more time is required for sanctions to work against the Iranian nuclear program. Sanctions which have done little but make the Iranian public tighten their belts while the theocratic government has proceeded steadily, despite roadblocks of various dimensions and causes, toward its goal of nuclear fulfillment.

The U.S. administration's official position is that there is time. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not all that close to acquiring its end-goal. This, despite what the IAEA chief has announced, despite Iran's deep and scientifically/technical close alliance with North Korea and its own well perfected ballistic missiles program, and its successfully tested miniaturized nuclear bomb.

Israel, understandably feels much less sanguine about the situation. North Korea's threat to the geographically distant but yet vulnerable U.S. with its long ocean borders and its troops stationed in South Korea and Japan exists as more of a concern to the United States. For Israel, there is the convincing reality that Iran is very close to achieving its goal. And when that goal is achieved the other goal of committing a nuclear annihilation of a nation will be addressed.

"By next spring, at most next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and moved on to the final stage", said Prime Minister Netanyahu in his address to the UN General Assembly last September, with his holding aloft of a cartoon drawing of the progression of bomb-making.

"It's been clear from the beginning that Obama and Netanyahu were doomed to dysfunction. This odd couple's ties are the most tenuous we've seen between the White House and Jerusalem," wrote Aaron David Miller, former adviser to U.S. secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, in the Washington Post.