No matter how many US officials insist that they are totally committed to Israel unconditionally, the soaring tension between the two nations is evident, and Israel’s open lobbying against US diplomatic overtures to Iran is just the beginning.
That’s because the Obama Administration has myriad ambitions across the Middle East, and Israel is more than tangentially involved in a lot of them. The tensions are likely to spillover into some or all of those venues.
The most obvious situation is the Palestinian peace talks, which Israel has been on the verge of destroying at any rate, but having repeatedly tied Palestinian statehood to Iran, the Netanyahu government may have a tailor-made excuse to kill the talks outright.
US intervention in Syria’s civil war and its policy toward Egypt are also open to considerable Israel interference, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems inclined toward petty needling on any issue that presents itself to display its displeasure toward the US.
