Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu sits awaiting his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at Villa Taverna in Rome, Italy, Monday, June 27, 2016.
Israeli officials have told reporters that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is talking with his national security team on making plans for exactly what they’re going to demand President-elect Donald Trump do to Iran. Surprisingly, it’s not going to include killing the P5+1 nuclear deal.
After a solid year of railing against the P5+1 nuclear deal and pushing a Republican Congress to kill it over objections of President Obama, Netanyahu now seems finally to accept the idea that the US trying to unilaterally tear up a seven nation pact would neither kill the deal nor paint the US in a particularly favorable light.
Instead, he’s shooting for the US to shift their focus to imposing massive unilateral sanctions of Iran because of their conventional ballistic missile development, with officials saying Netanyahu wants to “stop Iran from becoming a superpower in the region.”
Israel’s push for sanctions on Iran is never meant to actually change Iranian policy, as they always oppose removing any sanctions irrespective of the reason. The false narrative of Iran’s “nuclear” program being a threat has simply shifted to missiles, and if missiles stops being a good enough excuse, they’ll come up with something else.