And finally, one the administration gets almost right.
7. “Israel’s main goal is to preserve Azerbaijan as an ally against Iran, a platform for reconnaissance of that country and as a market for military hardware.” Israel’s main goal is delaying or ending Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons capability. But when a small country finds itself snubbed, denigrated, and sniffed at by the one country that should share its goals for a variety of philosophical, historical, governmental, and military reasons, it needs to find other allies. Azerbaijan – and Greece and Cyprus, among others – shares Israel’s fundamental concerns about Iran. Why does the administration find this both problematic and worthy of contempt?
The next time the President or the Secretary of State laud Israel as a friend, an ally and a partner, it is worth considering the conclusion of longtime Israeli defense analyst Ron Ben-Yishai:
In recent weeks the administration shifted from persuasion efforts vis-à-vis decision-makers and Israel’s public opinion to a practical, targeted assassination of potential Israeli operations in Iran… The campaign’s aims are fully operational: To make it more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF to carry out a strike, and what’s even graver, to erode the IDF’s capacity to launch such strike with minimal casualties.
Yes, it is possible that the U.S. is playing “good cop/bad cop” with Israel, but what kind of ally does that?
Originally published by Gatestone Institute http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org