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Did Israel Intentionally Undermine Obama's Outreach To Iran?
Yesterday, when the New York Times inexplicably gave Shimon Peres' insulting message to Iran equal play with President Obama''s, I thought it might be no coincidence.
Peres, who is an uberhawk on Iran, suddenly sends "greetings" to the Iranian people urging them to rise up against their government at the same moment that Obama respectfully addressed the "Islamic Republic of Iran" with the most conciliatory US message in decades. Coincidence? Maybe.
Of course, the Iranians would not view it that way. They would see America and Israel playing "good cop, bad cop," diminishing the effect of Obama's remarkable overture.
I hear that the White House is furious.
Today's Times reports that when asked about the Israeli move, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "I know we notified our allies about our message last evening," saying he did not know if the Israelis had been notified.
Of course, they were. No other ally is as concerned about Iran as Israel so Jerusalem must have been at the top of the list of those notified.
Did it respond with a hasty and insulting message iin order to kill the effect of President Obama's? If so, it was a serious breach. If the shoe was on the other foot, Jerusalem would go ballistic.
Some reporter needs to develop a tick-tock on this one. We need to know what happened. If it was an innocent coincidence, fine. If it wasn't, it bodes ill for any US attempt to mend relations with Iran (and prevent an Iranian bomb diplomatically rather than by attempting and failing through military means).
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Comments
Messages to Iran
M.J.
I continue to be heartened as I read the views of you and your IPF colleagues. I only wish that the MSM gave you guys at least the same space as the Neocon/AIPAC people.
Seems as though the editorial boards of the Times and WaPo are not your friends. As for the AP, Geesh!
I've tried to keep the Chas Freeman tragedy alive on my own little blog,
http://leesvoicecryinginthewilderness.blogspot.com.
I was disgusted that Obama left him to twist in the wind by making no public comment on the character assassination.
Lee, Cape Cod
aka Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper
Obama video: "coordinated" with Israel or co-opted by Peres?
Great column, MJ. Keep us posted on whether the "coordinator" is ever found.
Gibbs does not sound particularly furious to me. I wish he did, and I also wish I knew the experts who dared to actual suggest the "potential to dilute the effect" of Peres' message and why they are not being quoted in their own names. The chilling effect of the Chas Freeman brouhaha perhaps? If only Dennis Ross would have been subject to the same scrutiny!
I've been monitoring this saga as it unfolds, and have very little doubt that Shimon Peres' subversion of Obama's Nowruz message was as deliberate as it was destructive. It is also obvious that Peres' surprise address to Iranians to overthrow their elected leaders while blessing them for the new year was no sooner done than said.
It's remarkable how fast AP (which seems to have its own hawkish foreign policy towards Iran--its version of the Obama Nowruz video was interspersed with footage of ground to air missiles taking off and scenes of Khamenei and Ahmadinjad) got the Peres story, and how quickly so many US news sources, including the NY Times, Forbes, were both able and all too willing to lump Obama's video message with that of Peres! Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency actually made Peres' Nowruz broadcast the main subject of the article and Obama's video greeting the also-ran.
More about this on my TPM blog</a>...