Netanyahu's Request to Congress: War on Iran

The frontpage news has a tendency to lurch from one "bell cow" to the next. Recently that bell cow has been Greece's negotiations with the troika in Brussels and the Novorossiya Armed Forces victory in Debaltseve. Islamic State's war crimes have taken on a background white noise quality.

The new bell cow is Netanyahu's speech before Congress tomorrow. The paper is rife with stories -- about Israeli public opinion regarding the rift between Democrats and Likudniks, about Jews in Congress and whether they will attend Netanyahu's speech, about John Kerry's hands-on negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

What doesn't get highlighted in any of the above stories is how unprecedented it is for a House Speaker to invite the leader of a foreign country to address Congress without the consent of the Executive Branch. And it is not as if Netanyahu's address will be some pro forma exercise in praise of the filial bonds between Israel and the United States; rather, it will be a pointed critique of ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran, the failure of which will likely entail some form of attack on Iran.

Basically, Netanyahu is coming to Washington D.C. to request that Congress wage war on Iran. This is what it boils down to. Netanyahu's calculation is that Obama and the Democrats, following the 2014 midterms, are dead politically, and that it is better to risk the optics of a soft coup and a display of overt partisanship than have the United States agree to a deal with Iran which formalizes its right to process uranium.

The problem with the Israeli position -- a totally decommissioning of Iran's nuclear program -- is that its only international support comes from the foully corrupt Gulf sheikhdoms, the same countries that are tacitly supporting Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

And herein lies the untenable nature of the U.S. position in the Middle East: It is tacitly working with Iran to beat back Islamic State and Al Qaeda in Iraq, Yemen and Syria while at the same time it is collaborating with the Saudis and Turks to make sure Sunni Salafi interests are preserved in these very regions. It is the dance of perpetual war.

The dance can be maintained because there is no substantive democracy in the United States. The people can vote for a peace candidate but that candidate will do nothing other than deliver up more war. All Netanyahu's appearance tomorrow will do is ram home the obvious -- Americans don't live in a democracy.

AIPAC will praise a Congress that is universally loathed by the people it purports to represent. Yet Samantha Power and Susan Rice will appear before AIPAC today in an act of obeisance.

Israel's elections are March 17. At the end of the month the P5+1 talks are supposed to conclude with the announcement of a framework agreement, the details of which are to be hashed out by summer. My guess is that a framework agreement will be reached. Congress will try to pass more sanctions. The votes are probably there to override a filibuster in the Senate. Then Obama will veto the sanctions. It should be interesting.