Can Bennett say no to the US on issues of Iran if needed be?

Naftali Bennett had not yet even been sworn in as prime minister, yet Netanyahu posited that Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid would go soft on Iran and be unable to ever say “no” to the US.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is seen at the Knesset, on June 21, 2021. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is seen at the Knesset, on June 21, 2021.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Like a seasoned writer using foreshadowing as a literary device to hint at what will come later, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his final speech as prime minister before the Knesset last week, accused the government of being weak on Iran.
Naftali Bennett had not yet even been sworn in as prime minister, yet Netanyahu posited that Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid would go soft on Iran and be unable – because of a lack of stature, status and backbone – to ever say “no” to the US.
Only he, Netanyahu, could stand up to Washington when it came to Israel’s security. Only he, Netanyahu, was brave enough to approve daring missions against Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions. He, and he alone. No other.
That was the foreshadowing of things to come, a theme in Netanyahu’s Knesset address that those with perceptive hearing realized he would return to in an effort to undermine the current government. This was just the first taste of things to come.
The second taste came on Monday, when Netanyahu called a press conference to decry Lapid – whom he said was the true power behind the Bennett throne – for saying in a telephone conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the US and Israel would employ a “no surprises” policy with each other.
This policy – long a hallmark of US-Israel relations and one Netanyahu would have loved to have seen implemented in the early days of the Obama administration, when the US went behind Israel’s back and began negotiating with the Iranians, and that Netanyahu’s own foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, said in March was the policy he hoped would animate relations with the new Biden administration – was all of a sudden nefarious, bad and a sign that Israel had given up its independence.
Netanyahu set the table during his speech to the Knesset last week, and on Monday, he began pouring content into the dishes. In the Knesset he said the government would be weak on Iran, and on Monday, he showed how it was already doing just that.
Except that it was disingenuous.
Exhibit A for Netanyahu’s claim that Israel was forfeiting its freedom of action was an innocuous readout of the phone call Lapid had with Blinken last Thursday.
According to Netanyahu, “Lapid committed to a policy of no surprises on Iran in a conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. An official declaration about this was published on Friday by the Foreign Ministry and the State Department. This is an astounding Israeli commitment that severely harmed Israel’s national security.”
Except that it apparently never happened. The third sentence of a three-sentence statement put out by Lapid’s office said he and Blinken “decided on a policy of ‘no surprises’ between them, and in addition agreed to keep the lines of communication open and constant, and to meet in the future.”
No mention there of a commitment not to act on Iran; rather, just a generic comment about “no surprises,” an aspirational policy that goes back at least to the first meeting between prime minister Ariel Sharon and president George W. Bush in 2001.
This “no surprise policy” did not keep Sharon from taking the steps he deemed necessary to quell the Second Intifada, even steps the US opposed. Nor did this policy prevent prime minister Ehud Olmert from attacking the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 against American wishes.
The State Department readout of the call, meanwhile, made no mention of the “no surprises” policy – despite Netanyahu’s claim to the contrary.
It is a mighty stretch to take a neutral remark about a “no surprise” policy with Israel’s greatest ally and turn that into a commitment not to act independently against Iran. But that is what Netanyahu did, trying to create the perception that only he can effectively manage the relationship with the US; that only he can protect Israel from Iran.
It is clear that opposition leaders want to bring down the government. That’s their job. But in so doing, not all means justify the ends – certainly not taking a single sentence from a phone readout and turning it into the cornerstone of a new Israeli national security policy, and also not rocking the Israel-US relationship in an effort to capsize the Bennett-Lapid government.


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