Rumored Bibi Tantrum to US Amb. Did Occur, Says US Rep.

Rep. Mike Rogers was present and said he'd never seen anything that confrontational in a diplomatic meeting

A much-talked about and rumored diplomatic confrontation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro did, in fact, unravel into an unusually sharp shouting match, according to Rep. Mike Rogers.

Rogers (R-MI) is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee was in attendance during a diplomatic meeting between US and Israeli officials. Press reports came out following the meeting saying an unseemly confrontation took place, only to be later dismissed as “silly” exaggerations.

But now Rogers has confirmed in a radio interview that there was a “sharp exchange between the Administration’s representative there, our ambassador there, and Mr. Netanyahu, which was unusual to say the least, but I thought at the end of the day maybe productive.”

The clash arose out of Netanyahu’s frustration that the Obama administration wasn’t threatening Iran with military strike nearly enough, to which Shapiro retorted that Obama had been plenty clear and plenty aggressive.

When asked to describe the tone of the meeting, Rogers said: “Very tense. Some very sharp… exchanges and it was very, very clear the Israelis had lost their patience with the (Obama) Administration.”

Rogers said he’d never seen such a confrontation before. “We’ve had sharp exchanges with other heads of state and in intelligence services and other things, but nothing at that level that I’ve seen in all my time where people were clearly that agitated, clearly that worked up about a particular issue where there was a very sharp exchange.”

The outburst from Netanyahu was a clear sign of his aggressive style and ideological zeal for war. President Obama has militarily surrounded Iran, committed covert cyber-war on Iran, supported the Israelis as they assassinated civilian Iranian scientists, and heaped unprecedented harsh sanctions on Iran which are crippling their economy…all to stop a nuclear weapons program that both the US and Israel admit Iran doesn’t even have.

Yet Netanyahu wanted more, and wasn’t getting it. So he threw a tantrum during a diplomatic meeting.

Author: John Glaser

John Glaser writes for Antiwar.com.