Romney Greenlights Israeli Iran Attack

Update: August 21: In this article from early August we had said, "Netanyahu’s strategy is to use the U.S. election for leverage....Were Israel to attack now, an American president running for re-election would not risk losing the Jewish vote by withholding the support of the U.S. military".
    Newsmax today reports, "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to launch an attack...before the presidential election in November. He believes President Barack Obama would have no choice but to back the Israeli decision in the weeks before he has to face the nation at the polls, according to a report in the Times of Israel".
   Getting that right does not please us. Instead, that action should provoke outrage from Americans at this brazen attempt to entrap this country.
Mitt Romney drew the wrath of even those on the right for undercutting U.S. foreign policy in his trip to Israel, virtually promising old friend and Israeli Prime Minister BiBi Netanyahu (they worked for the same company in Boston in 1976) that he would back Israel without reservation if it launched an attack on Iran.

Simultaneously, Defense Department chief Leon Panetta was also in Israel for two days, doing his utmost to persuade Netanyahu to do the opposite — to let the sanctions take full effect, and asking Netanyahu to back away from increasing intimations that Israel is contemplating an attack. "I want to reassert again the position of the United States that with regards to Iran, we will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Period."

Netanyahu was having none of it. Even with Panetta standing at his side, Netanyahu said, "Right now the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program", he said. "Neither sanctions nor diplomacy has yet had any impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program".

Netanyahu’s strategy is to use the U.S. election for leverage. What else explains his unwillingness to wait for the effect of the tougher sanctions that were put in effect only 30 days previous on July 1? And with overwhelming votes, both the House and the Senate just passed another serving of sanctions — these to affect Iran’s shipping, energy and financial institutions — which says that sanctions still have more to run.

Why other than to manipulate the U.S. election would Netanyahu have invited Romney to Israel in the midst of the campaign? A naïf in the hands of the crafty prime minister, Romney as champion of Israel’s cause might as well have been scripted. With one candidate in his pocket, Netanyahu’s bet may even be that, were Israel to attack now, an American president running for re-election would not risk losing the Jewish vote by withholding the support of the U.S. military.

The Obama administration clearly wants to avoid yet another war in the Middle East, sapping our military strength still further and at a moment in history when we are better advised to pivot to the rising threat in the Pacific. But not Romney. “If Israel has to take action on its own in order to stop Iran from developing that capability, the governor would respect that decision...No option would be excluded. Gov. Romney recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself and that it is right for America to stand with it.”

Those comments were from Romney’s close friend and advisor on Israel Dan Senor, briefing reporters in Israel on what Romney was about to say in a speech later the same day. Pat Buchanan, a well to the right pundit, although isolationist, asked what “stand with” means? If it means U.S. air cover while Israeli planes strike Iran, “this would make America complicit in a pre-emptive strike and a co-belligerent in the war to follow”. And if Romney would leave it to Israel to decide when to strike and bring the U.S. into war, “this country has never done that before”.

Senor is hardly neutral; he wrote the book about Israeli entrepreneurial culture that is presumed to have inspired the Romney comments that were interpreted as a slur against the Palestinians. Senor’s sister runs the Jerusalem office of AIPAC, the powerful lobbying group for Israel in D.C.

The governor’s choice of advisors skew toward the interventionist policies of the neo-conservatives that brought us the Iraq War. The Nation is a magazine well to the left, but this article which lists Romney’s foreign policy advisors makes clear that he is attracted to the preemptive policies of the George W. Bush years.

George Friedman, at Stratfor Global Intelligence, concurs. In comparison to what he says is Obama’s preference for allowing regions to work out their own balances of power, Romney favors “active balancing”. Romney has said that Russia is "without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe" and Friedman interprets that to mean that Romney “requires U.S. action on a substantial scale”. Romney would take action in the Syrian conflict, has spoken out strongly against China, as in this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, and — as we have seen — he has said he would raise the defense budget a staggering 20%. How he would somehow finance America’s new virility by at the same time cutting personal taxes 20% and reducing corporate taxes from 35% to 25% has not been explained.

The question is, are we ever going to return to the Constitution that reserves to the Congress the power to declare war rather than allow the single individual that sits in the Oval Office to act on his own?

Where would either Obama or Romney find the right to enter into a war against Iran? Immediately after 9/11 Congress authorized George W. Bush — and until rescinded, other presidents in turn — to:

"use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons [emphasis added]."

A nation supposedly developing nuclear weapons is what many nations — including Israel — have done and does not fit the definition of “terrorist”. A nation that has threatened some other nation is not a threat “against the United States”. So while Mr. Romney’s prepared remarks about Iran developing WMD said, “Preventing that outcome must be our highest national security priority”, that is not our highest priority. It is Israel's.

“We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Period” sounds absolute, but Panetta’s words are actually careful. Our reading is that the U.S. is saying it will require actual evidence of Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon before taking action or aiding in Israel’s doing so. And that’s the right policy. We cannot be dragged into another war based only on speculation about WMD, nor by the bullying of the leader of another country. We’ve just seen Romney make promises to Israel to win Florida’s Jewish vote, and if Obama counters with the same, we will be watching both of them put self before country.