Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barack Obama today at the White House in a bid to find common ground on Iran talks after a year of disputes over making peace with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu said he would stress to Obama the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, amid concern in Israel that the U.S. may lose focus on the issue because of its military campaign against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria.
“We all support the effort led by President Obama to stop and defeat ISIS,” Netanyahu told a gathering of American Jewish community leaders in New York yesterday, using an acronym for Islamic State’s former name. “But to defeat ISIS, and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power, is to win the battle and lose the war.”
World powers are negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program as a U.S.-led military alliance strikes Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter group that has seized parts of Iraq and Syria and gained notoriety for beheadings and crucifixions. Although Iran isn’t part of that coalition, it’s also helping its Iraqi and Syrian allies to fight the militant group, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it has a role to play in defeating Islamic State.
Kerry didn’t clarify exactly what Iran was offering to combat climate change, which he still maintains is our most pressing threat.
The adults in the room, however, face quite the conundrum. ISIS and its antics have made it impossible for even a detached golfer who moonlights as president of the United States to ignore. ISIS is beheading Americans but Iran hates ISIS too, and we can be safe in assuming it is not because of the way they’re treating U.S. citizens. So, if you want to play “the enemy of my enemy…” here it gets confusing.
The protracted way we’re going about dealing with ISIS just gives the Iranians more time to dupe the rest of the world when it comes to the nuclear negotiations.
We might actually welcome Ebola soon.
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