US: No Daylight Between Obama, Netanyahu on Iran

Netanyahu Disagrees, Urges US to Elect Hypothetical Super-Hawkish Candidate

Speaking today on CNN’s State of the Union, US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice not only sought to downplay the split between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on starting a war with Iran, she denied that any split even existed.

“There’s absolutely no daylight between the United States and Israel that we will do what it takes to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Rice insisted, in a speech that ignored several comments from Netanyahu in the past, and apparently was not cleared with him beforehand.

Because Prime Minister Netanyahu, appearing on the same show, lashed the Obama Administration for its refusal to be hawkish enough on Iran, and urging US voters to elect a candidate willing to set earlier red lines on starting a war with Iran, saying the world has only six months to act.

Even assuming US voters were as eager to placate Netanyahu as most politicians seem to be, this hypothetical super-hawk candidate simply doesn’t exist. Netanyahu clearly doesn’t like the Obama position, and Mitt Romney has staked out an explicitly identical one on the “red line” issue. Going down the complete list of third party candidates with enough ballot access to have even a theoretical shot of election, the Netanyahu candidate is, much like the putative evidence against Iran, entirely illusory.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.