(Community Matters) I don’t think the Pres bluffs and the language implicitly promises Israel that we’ll take care of this. It tells me we really could go to war with Iran in the very near future. From Playbook:
BREAKING – The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg interviews President Obama in the Oval for 45 minutes on the Iran crisis – “Obama to Iran and Israel: ‘As President of the United States, I Don’t Bluff'”: “At the White House on Monday, President Obama will seek to persuade the skeptical Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to postpone whatever plans he may have to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months. Obama will argue that under his leadership, the United States ‘has Israel’s back,’ and that he will order the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear program if economic sanctions fail to compel Tehran to shelve its nuclear ambitions. … Obama told me earlier this week that both Iran and Israel should take seriously the possibility of American action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“‘I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff. … I also don’t … go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say. … At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally, [Syria] is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim? … The prime minister is head of a modern state that is mindful of the profound costs of any military action, and in our consultations with the Israeli government, I think they take those costs, and potential unintended consequences, very seriously.’ … [W]hen I asked the president if he thought Israel could damage its reputation among Americans with an attack on Iran, … he said, ‘I think we in the United States instinctively sympathize with Israel.'” Transcript http://bit.ly/xm0Zlq
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