Did Netanyahu Just Promise Vengeance for Obama’s Iran Nuclear Accord?

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Oh boy is Netanyahu mad! Obama dared defy him by rejecting the prime minister’s bid to control America’s foreign policy. And he allegedly plans to get even.

But how? According to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, Obama plans to become UN secretary general when he leaves the White House, and Benjamin Netanyahu, with a Churchillian flair for the dramatic, calls this the “Obama Project.”

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon leaves office in 2017, leaving the spot vacant. But the Al Jarida report has Netanyahu saying the world has had enough of Nobel Prize-winning Obama:

“Wasn’t eight years of having Obama in office enough? Eight years during which he ignored Israel? And now he wants to be in a position that is liable to cause us hardships in the international arena.”

According to Al-Jarida, a Netanyahu aid explained,

“Obama is the worst president Israel has had to deal with and the worst president for the Middle East and its allies, the moderate Arab states.”

Maybe Netanyahu wants to return all that free stuff we give his country to keep is afloat.

Israeli National News, Arutz-Sheva says the report “admittedly appears somewhat far-fetched.” Not the part about Obama wanting to be UN secretary general but the part about Netanyahu’s thirst for vengeance.

On the contrary, Netanyahu has been the worst prime minister the United States has ever had to deal with. The United States, under the administration of Barack Obama, has been a steadfast ally of Israel. It wasn’t Obama who went behind Netanyahu’s back with the Knesset, after all.

The Jerusalem Post reports that,

A source close to Netanyahu did not deny to Al-Jarida that the premier is aiming to “torpedo the Obama project,” noting that “his presidency was characterized by [Washington’s] moving closer to the Muslim Brotherhood, toppling the regime of Hosni Mubarak, and attempts to ally itself with political Islam.”

“Obama’s term is ending with him forging an alliance with Iran, coming to an agreement with it on its nuclear program which in the end will result in a similar scenario that took place with North Korea,” the aide said.

“Israel will not allow this to happen,” the source is quoted as saying. “It will take all of the necessary steps to prevent Iran from manufacturing a nuclear weapon either covertly or overtly.”

In this scenario it is obvious what Netanyahu wants, and that is what he was denied by president Obama: control of U.S. foreign policy. In a snit fit, he now vows revenge against the man who thwarted him. As for the specter of political Islam, see the Brookings analysis here.

Of course, we have only Al-Jarida‘s word that Obama even wants the U.N. spot. Netanyahu could be working himself up into a tizzy over nothing. Obama so far has said nothing.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans from thinking obsessively of the possibility. An editorial at Investors Business Daily (IBD) observed as early as 2014 that the UN “can make him ‘president of the world’ and speculates (and here you can almost hear the hysteria) that “the U.S., even under a Republican administration, might not veto an ex-U.S. president in the Security Council.”

Because a Republican Congress hasn’t tried to overrule Obama even once since 2009? I think the editors over at IBD have somehow missed going on 60-some attempted repeals of Obamacare, suing the president and even threatening to impeach him for not doing what Congress wants him to do in some cock-eyed understanding of the Constitution.

Are you kidding? A Republican Congress wouldn’t hesitate for a second to ignore Obama if he was UN secretary general. They’ve threatened to defund the executive branch. Think they’d worry about defunding the UN?

What is remarkable in all this is that people are less alarmed by Netanyahu’s reported vow of vengeance against a United States president than by Obama’s rumored desire to be UN secretary general. Certainly Republicans are afraid of the UN because it’s full of people unimpressed by the GOP’s false narrative, but the UN general secretary has no real power.

It was Sir Francis Bacon, a true statesman, who said, “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out” (Essays, 1625). Ironically, it is this sort of thing the U.N. was founded to guard against, the rogue behavior of arrogant world leaders bringing ruination to all.

As Martin Luther King, Jr, whom Republicans claim to love without understanding him, wrote in 1958, “An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Benjamin Netanyahu may want to put Obama’s reputation and career in the ground, but if what Al-Jarida reports is true, he has written his own epithet instead.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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