How badly has American credibility been damaged by Israeli treatment of Vice President Biden during his visit to the country? According to this article by columnist Elias Harfoush of Saudi Arabia’s Dar al-Hayat, seeing Washington get pushed around this way is making it hard for Arabs to resist Iranian threats – and support harsher sanctions over its nuclear program. Harfoush also writes that Israeli “bullying” of Washington has further emboldened Tehran to defy Washington, writing, “America must once and for all take account of the fact that Iran’s arrogant behavior is in part based on Israeli bullying of America.”
For Dar al-Hayat, Elias Harfoush writes in part:
There are those who say that Netanyahu decided to teach Biden and his president, Barack Obama, a lesson on the limits of U.S. pressure on Israel they would never forget. But that wasn’t the only reason for this deliberate insult. It was also due to a desire to punish the American president for his opposition to Israeli demands for him to allow Israeli fighter jets to penetrate Iraqi airspace to carry out strikes against Iran.
This is the dynamic that puts the Iranian issue at the very heart of the difficult relationship between America and Israel. While the Obama Administration has come to acknowledge that its policy of extending an open hand to Iran hasn’t led to the desired result, a fact frankly admitted by U.S. Defense Secretary Gates while visiting Abu Dhabi, Gates also said that his government believes that the policy achieved a no-less valuable objective: exposing the truth of Iran’s intentions to the world, consequently making it easier to arrive at a consensus on imposing sanctions against the Tehran regime.
However the Gulf states, as concerned as they may be about Iranian arrogance and political, sectarian trouble-making, nothing can compensate for the “Viagra” Israel has subtracted from Washington’s accounts. Indeed, in order to bring U.S. interests in the region back into balance, Washington must prove that it’s a superpower with leaders that don’t accept insults and punish those who utter them. America must once and for all take account of the fact that Iran’s arrogant behavior is in part based on Israeli bullying of America.
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