Opposition Claims Bibi Omnipotent: ‘Could Have Prevented Iran Deal’

The Left’s defeats have left Labor and its allies feeling that Netanyahu must be able to bend reality to his will.

Jerusalem, July 14 – Israeli Opposition lawmakers expressed dismay that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had failed to prevent the international agreement with Iran to remove economic sanctions, saying that Netanyahu, who is obviously all-powerful, could have done more to keep the deal from being reached, and obviously chose not to.

The US and other Western powers reached an accord late Sunday night, allowing the Islamic republic to maintain its nuclear facilities and enrich uranium, and removing the economic sanctions that have left Iran’s economy in distress. In exchange, Tehran will submit to a regime of inspections, but Israel and other opponents of the Ayatollahs fear Iran will circumvent inspections and other terms of the deal and develop nuclear weapons as North Korea did under a more restrictive agreement. Leaders of the Knesset Opposition factions laid the blame at the feet of the prime minister, who, by implication, was the only one standing in the way of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

“This is clearly Netanyahu’s failure,” said Opposition head Isaac Herzog of Labor. “He sabotaged our relationship with the US, undermining any effort to convince them of the folly of this deal,” Herzog explained, evidently under the impression that US President Barack Obama did not have just such an agreement in mind long before his relationship with Netanyahu soured, despite clear indications of just such an aim early in Obama’s first term.

Experts say the perception of Netanyahu as all-powerful may stem from Herzog’s – and the Israeli Left as a whole – experience with the prime minister. Despite what they describe as his warped priorities, ham-fisted diplomacy, political cowardice, lack of vision, and possibly even overt racism, Netanyahu has still defeated the manifestly better-qualified and more enlightened candidates from Labor in several consecutive elections. Those defeats have left Labor and its allies feeling that Netanyahu must be able to bend reality to his will, as no electorate anywhere would knowingly reelect such a colossal, unmitigated failure, which is the only possible way to view him. Consequently, say political experts, it takes only a small logical leap to believe that Netanyahu also exerts near-complete control over American foreign policy, and it was only his lack of will or competence that allowed an Iran deal to materialize.

“It’s a common pattern among history’s losers,” notes analyst Kom Bina. “It goes without saying that we need to find a scapegoat for our misfortunes, so people find ways of identifying someone to blame, and thus maintain a sense of order and reinforce existing prejudices. It would never occur to the Israeli Left to concede that Netanyahu did as much as any Israeli leader could do, but that wasn’t enough in the face of Obama’s determination to see a deal through at almost any cost. Accepting that reality would contradict Herzog’s narrative of everything being Netanyahu’s fault, a narrative that does not allow for misfortune for which Bibi is not somehow culpable.”

Conveniently for Herzog, at least, that narrative dovetails with his political ambitions – and those of other Opposition leaders echoing him – so that they are better positioned, politically, to replace Netanyahu and lead the country into completely different strategic catastrophes.