Don’t fault Biden, he was just sticking to the same script politicians have used for decades with regard to friendly allied countries who are threatened by hostile authoritarian regimes. But Obama has now entered the fray to correct the record — the United States will no longer sit idly by as a military dictatorship with nuclear ambitions is subjected to the threat of limited strikes for the sake of self-defense:
No doubt this is all true, and no doubt that the Israelis are working out the details of an attack anyway — because they will not defer on questions of security to an American president who they perceive as disinterested if not outright hostile to the survival of a Jewish state. And of course, it’s almost certainly in the best interests of the United States to have plausible deniability should the Israelis go forward with a strike. In this case it’s just that the deniability is more than plausible, it’s almost certainly real. The Israelis are, according to one source, afraid to even bring up the possibility of a strike in the working group set up by Bibi and Obama at their last meeting lest their American counterparts give them a hard no — which they then might have to disobey. Better to ask forgiveness than ask permission. And really, what’s Obama going to do about it anyway? He won’t even sanction the Iranian regime for killing Iranians, why should he sanction the Israelis for doing the same?
