US official: Netanyahu is a ‘coward’ on Iran
In damning report on crisis in US-Israel ties, senior Obama administration officials tell the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg of ‘red-hot anger’ towards Netanyahu.
As the crisis between Israel and the US deepens, senior American officials continue to express “red-hot anger” at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s chickens**t,” said one US official to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in a damning report published Tuesday.
Goldberg writes that over the years Washington officials have described Netanyahu as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, and pompous – but none of these insults were as surprising, he says, as “chickens**t.”
One official told Goldberg that the Israeli leader was a “coward” on Iran and that the Obama administration no longer believes Netanyahu’s threats of a preemptive airstrike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.
“It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late,” the official said in the Atlantic report.
Goldberg writes that in the two recent US election cycles, the Obama administration was concerned that Netanyahu would follow through on his threat of a strike. But, the official told the Atlantic, “The feeling is now that Bibi’s bluffing.”
“He’s not Begin at Osirak,” added the official, referencing the 1981 ordered by former prime minister Menachem Begin on an Iraqi nuclear reactor. Goldberg further writes that both former and current administration officials have at times told him that Netanyahu leads as if he is the mayor of Jerusalem.
One senior US official stressed to Goldberg that, unlike many of Israel’s iconic leaders, Netanyahu was afraid of taking action. “The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not (Yitzhak) Rabin, he’s not (Ariel) Sharon, he’s certainly no (Menachem) Begin. He’s got no guts.”
I don’t think he is a coward. Since the negotiations are going on he doesn’t want to flare up tensions. Israel has the might to start a war with iran but currently lacks the ability to win the war unless there is an republican in the congress.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never been a coward with any decisions he’s ever made both as the Likud Part leader and as a Tier One Matkal operative. PM Netanyahu’s remarkable ability to make calculated decisions that may be place him in a questionable light is not a concern for the fearless PM who has always had the heart of a lion. I’ve always admired the PM for his unselfish ability to act in the State’s best interests without regard to what the media or the cronies who work for the Obama administration have to say about him. Based on this PM’s record I can affirm to anyone who views such criticisms to introspectively to understand that Netanyahu, the esteemed elder statesman that he now is will without a doubt or scintilla of reservation in my mind, will aggressively respond to the Iranian nuclear threat when he sees the kind of actionable intelligence that warrants the preemptive strike that the Israel Air Force is thoroughly prepared to execute with a single coded order.
I hope you are right that Prime Minister BiBi Netanyahu will have the courage to act unilaterally and decisively in the case of Iran. He has appeared weak when dealing with the Obama Administration.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and doesn’t finish Hamas off because of world opinion, then he’s a weak self hating jewish duck that has no real jewish pride or faith in Gd.
This traitor has released thousands of terrorists while criminalizing and imprisoning righteous Jews.
It is obvious that the lives of muslims are more dear to him than the lives of Jews.