While neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, the IAEA has expressed concern about military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program. But right-wing hawks — from GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney to Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens — are repeating talking points that the Israelis are on the verge of unilaterally attacking in the face of an “existential threat” from Tehran.

Today, former Israeli intelligence chief Meir Dagan slammed Netanyahu’s government for representing fringe political positions, adding that Israel does not face an existential threat. The AP reports:

Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad spy agency said he does not believe Israel faces an existential threat from Iran, a view that contrasts with Israel’s prime minister and other leaders. [...]

At the launch of an electoral reform movement he chairs, he observed, “I don’t think there is an existential threat.” He did not specifically mention Iran, but the use of the phrase “existential threat” in Israel generally refers to Iran.

Dagan is joined by the current Israeli intelligence chief Tamir Pardo who reportedly told a gathering of Israeli ambassadors in December that Iran doesn’t pose an “existential threat” and “the term existential threat is used too freely.”

Last week, retired Israeli Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak told The Independent that the Israeli military’s leadership does not support a strike on Iran and the Associated Press reported that Israel’s new air force chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, is “less enthusiastic about a possible attack on Iran” than his predecessor.

There is no doubt that Iran’s nuclear program, if weaponized, is incredibly worrying and constitutes a threat to nuclear non-proliferation efforts as well as Israel’s security. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said recently that Iran can be dissuaded from nuclear weapons through diplomacy and economic sanctions.

But Romney’s attacks are based on wholesale fabrications of President Barack Obama’s track record as a close ally of Israel for the past three years. Romney charged:

This president went before the United Nations and castigated Israel for building settlements. He said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

The smear may have garnered applause from the debate audience but a National Jewish Democratic Council fact check found that Obama’s September 21, 2011 U.N. speech had explicitly addressed the issue of rockets fired into Israel. Obama said:

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses.

Romney went on to charge the White House with “[throwing] Israel under the bus” by “defining ’67 borders as a starting point for negotiations” — a position also held by the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations — and accused Obama of “[disrespecting] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — Bibi Netanyahu.”

Watch it:

Following Obama’s U.N. speech in September, Netanyahu said to President Obama:

I think that standing your ground, taking this position of principle… I think this is a badge of honor and I want to thank you for wearing that badge of honor.

And last May, Netanyahu praised Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security, telling the audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference that Obama had made an “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” and “[has] backed those words with deeds.”

Israel and discussion of U.S Middle East policy is one of the few foreign policy topics to emerge as a wedge issue for the GOP presidential candidates. Indeed, in the previous GOP debate three days ago, Newt Gingrich also made false claims about Obama’s policy toward Israel. But Obama’s track record of close cooperation with Israel requires critics like Romney and Gingrich to resort to outright fabrications to smear Obama as a weak ally to the Jewish state.

We are asked, sometimes, whether Obama is really a soft appeaser. To that, I say: ‘Go ask Osama bin Laden.’

Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta emphasized that “there are no options off the table” in dealing with a potential Iranian nuclear weapons program and General Martin Dempsey sought to dispel concerns raised in an interview last month in which he suggested the Israel might not warn the U.S. before undertaking a unilateral attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. Yesterday, Dempsey told CNN:

We are trying to establish some confidence on the part of the Israelis that we recognize their concerns and are collaborating with them on addressing them.

Barak also emphasized that Israeli-U.S. defense coordination was “absolutely fine” and sought to downplay rumors of tensions between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

They don’t have to love each other. It’s enough that they respect and understand that no one works as if they were alone, in a bubble.

Barak’s comments come as Republicans seek to portray Obama as weakening Israel’s security. Earlier this month, Bill Kristol, speaking through a press release for his far-right-wing pressure group, the Emergency Committee for Israel, said the White House “keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.” And GOP presidential candidates speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Candidates Forum took turns criticizing Obama’s handling of Iran and commitment to Israel’s security. Rick Perry accused the administration of a “torrent of hostility” toward Israel and Mitt Romney claimed, “Over the last three years President Obama has… chastened Israel.”

But Barak’s praise of Obama’s relationship with Israel and Netanyahu’s appreciation for the White House’s “unprecedented” security cooperation would seem to stand in direct contradiction with the right-wing voices seeking to portray the administration as insufficiently committed to Israel’s security.

Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

Gingrich, who characterized Palestinians as “terrorists” during a December 10th GOP debate and told the Jewish Channel that Palestians are an “invented” people, would seem to be mirroring the hardline positions taken by his early, and cash flush, benefactor.

“Sheldon has always loved Newt. He stuck with him through all of this,” Fred Zeidman, an Adelson friend and major player in the American Jewish community who is backing Mitt Romney told The Daily Beast’s Aram Roston. “He stuck with him when he stumbled. Newt, I think, is very reflective of Sheldon’s mindset. Particularly with Israel.”

While Adelson and Gingrich appear to share the same right-wing agenda on the Middle East, the casino magnate’s business dealings in China have proven a political liability for him at home. Adelson allegedly helped crush a congressional measure by House Republicans opposing Beijing’s Olympic bid. “The bill will never see the light day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it,” he reportedly told Beijing’s mayor in 2001 after phoning then House Majority Whip Tom Delay. The Sands Corporation went on to receive a lucrative casino license from the Chinese government, permitting them to begin a massive development in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR).

Responding to Adelson’s close dealings with the Chinese government, the Christian Coalition of Alabama’s president, Dr. Randy Brinson denounced Adelson for “not sharing our values.” “Where Sheldon Adelson has placed his treasure makes it quite clear where his heart is: in gambling and backing the regime in China that persecutes Christians,” he said.

Gingrich will face his own difficulties in persuading Christian evangelicals troubled by his multiple marriages and extramarital affairs to support his candidacy. But Sheldon Adelson’s noticeable presence in the Gingrich camp may prove another obstacle in winning over the all-important Christian-right.

Oren reportedly told a story about asking Obama for fire fighting assistance when forest fires swept through Israel’s Carmel Forest last year:

Netanyahu directed his ambassador to, “Quick, go ask President Obama for help.”

That’s when Oren entered the White House and asked to see the president.

“I told him the situation and without hesitation, President Obama turned to one of his aides and said, ‘get Israel whatever it needs. Now,’ ” Oren recalled. [...]

“Later that night,” Oren continued, “I learned, that the President left the Hanukkah reception and flew secretly to Afghanistan. Upon arriving, he called Washington and the first question he asked, ‘Has Israel gotten its planes?’ He also called Prime Minister Netanyahu and expressed his condolences for Israel’s losses and America’s commitment to Israel’s wellbeing.“

Oren’s story of close cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, not to mention Obama’s clear commitment to Israel’s well-being and security, flies in the face of the accusations liberally thrown around the RJC’s event.

Mitt Romney claimed, “Over the last three years President Obama has… chastened Israel.” Rick Perry accused the administration of a “torrent of hostility” toward Israel. And Newt Gingrich criticized the administration for failing to reprimand “the Secretary of Defense for an insulting performance the other day” after Leon Panetta called for Israelis and Palestinians to “get to the damn [negotiating] table.”

But listening to Michael Oren’s story of Obama’s commitment to Israel, it’s unclear how or when Obama has been anything less than a committed ally to Israel. And just last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reflected on Obama’s security guarantees to Israel, concluding, “he has backed those words with deeds.” While Republican presidential candidates may see attacking Obama’s pro-Israel credentials as a useful campaign ploy, Israel’s prime minister and ambassador to the U.S. are telling a very different story of the White House’s relationship with the Jewish state.

The most overblown response, though, came from right-wing don Bill Kristol. Speaking through a press release from the far-right-wing pressure group he heads, the Emergency Committee for Israel, Kristol attacked President Obama’s comments last weekend to Jewish donors that his administration’s security cooperation with Israel had reached new heights in the partnership. Kristol said:

Nobody believes President Obama when he claims, as he did last week, that he “has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” That’s because he hasn’t — and because President Obama and his administration keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.

The problem with Kristol’s statement, and one he seems to willfully ignore, is that there are at least a few people who don’t hold his stated opinion about the Obama administration’s work on Israel’s security, among them Israel’s leaders.

In a speech delivered to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) national convention in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called American security cooperation with Israel during the Obama administration “unprecedented”:

Yesterday President Obama spoke about his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented. He spoke of that commitment not just in front of AIPAC. He spoke about it in two speeches heard throughout the Arab world. And he has backed those words with deeds.

In September, Netanyahu personally thanked Obama in a speech for his attentiveness and support in resolving a crisis when demonstrators overtook Israel’s embassy in Cairo.

The various U.S. security commitments to Israel are legion. In the same speech Kristol criticized, Panetta announced that “the U.S. armed forces and the [Israel Defense Forces] will conduct the largest joint exercises in the history of that partnership.” This spring, Israel used an expanded aid package from the Obama administration to develop the Iron Dome missile defense system that protects citizens of southern Israel from rocket attacks with a 93 percent success rate. And the U.S. has worked closely with Israel in slowing Iran’s nuclear progress, even reportedly partnering up to create the Stuxnet virus that hampered Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and selling Israel bunk-busing bombs. All the work has included unflinching diplomatic support for Israel in international fora.

In August, former Israeli prime minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he could “hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now.” Last month, Barak said Obama is an “extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to its security” and that his administration was “excelling in this.” He added: “I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.” Maybe someone should tell Bill Kristol.

Netanyahu delivered taped comments to the crowd at the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) gala after Beck received the Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award from right-wing billionaire (and Netanyahu supporter) Sheldon Adelson. Netanyahu said:

I also want to congratulate Glenn Beck for winning the Miriam and Sheldon Adelson award, the Defender of Israel award. Glenn, you can be sure that if Sheldon and Miri Adelson put their name to something, it must stand for a lot. You stand for a lot. You’ve been fearless in defending Israel against the slanders that are hurled against it. You’ve done that with considerable personal cost but you’ve never backed off, you’ve never flinched, you’ve walked away. And I want to tell you how deeply we appreciate this stand of courage and integrity.

Watch the video:

All Israelis might not view Beck the way Netanyahu does. This summer, when Israel saw its largest protests ever in the name of social justice, Beck denounced the gathering. Despite 88 percent approval for the protests among Israelis, Beck, in a typically conspiracy-laced tirade, derided the prostesters a leftist-Islamist-Nazi plot to bring Israel down.

Beck also launched an attack last year on liberal billionaire George Soros. Michelle Goldberg of the Daily Beast called the episode of Beck’s now-defunct Fox News Show “a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chided Beck’s remarks as “horrific.” Later, the ADL also criticized Beck for comparing Reform Judaism to radical Islam, this time eliciting an apology from the radio host.

The Los Angeles Times also rounded up some of Beck’s contrversial statements about Jews:

He has several times had to fend off allegations of anti-Semitism. Last year he appeared to endorse the notion that Jews killed Jesus Christ; his list of the world’s nine most “dangerous” people includes eight Jews…

An official from the liberal Israeli organization Peace Now told the paper: “If this is the only kind of friend Israel’s government can find around the world, that’s a very poor sign.”

The uptick in bomb-Iran chatter has led ex-Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy to call for Netanyahu’s government to temper their hawkish rhetoric. Ynet.com reports:

“The State of Israel cannot be destroyed,” he told Ynet on Friday. “An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years.”

On Thursday, Halevy, speaking at an army boarding school reunion, pushed back at Netnayahu’s claims that Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel, saying “[Iran is] far from posing an existential threat to Israel.” Halevi, as reported by Ynet, added that domestic radicalization “poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejad.”

While Halevi’s outspoken comments about rightward tilts in Israel and his warnings against a unilateral attack on Iran have brought scorn from members of Netanyahu’s cabinet — indeed Political-Security Cabinet member and House and Construction Minister Ariel Atias characterized Halevy’s statements as “shocking and inciting and they divide the people of Israel at a time when it needs unity more than ever” — the former intelligence chief is not alone in his opposition to Netanyahu and Barak’s saber rattling.

In May, former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan called an Israeli strike on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

And twelve of the eighteen living former heads of the three Israeli security branches are actively opposing or have spoken out against Netanyahu’s aggressive gestures toward Iran.

Cain at a Jewish holy site in Jerusalem

In an interview with the free Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom (or Israel Today), Cain, in attempt to show how President Obama’s “lack of a firm stand regarding Israel has emboldened Israel’s enemies,” made his most disparaging comments yet about Palestinians, verging on denying their existence as a people:

I think that the so-called Palestinian people have this urge for unilateral recognition because they see this president as weak.

In reality, the Palestinian national movement is decades old, if not more — and certainly older than Obama. But the most shocking part of Cain’s statement was his equivocation on the existence of the Palestinian people. As Center for American Progress analyst Matt Duss wrote last year:

Despite the fact that scholars such as Rashid Khalidi have established the emergence of a distinct Palestinian national consciousness in the 19th century, the offensive idea that the Palestinians don’t exist — or the equally offensive idea that they only exist as a negative reaction to the creation of Israel — is unfortunately still a fairly common belief among Israel hawks. [...]

As Peter Beinart noted in his recent piece in the New York Review of Books, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself made the claim in his 1993 book A Place Among the Nations.

With regard to Duss’s last point, it seems Israel Hayom is the perfect place for Cain to make his statement. In a 2008 New Yorker profile of the daily paper’s owner, American right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson, Connie Bruck wrote:

In the Israeli media world, Israel Hayom is referred to as Bibi-ton, because many believe that it serves as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, whose nickname is Bibi, and who has long received extraordinarily negative press coverage in Israel.

Cain’s latest comments about the “so-called Palestinian people” and his bogus interpretation of their national movement should give us an idea of what kind of progress (or lack thereof) a Cain presidency would make in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Overlaid claims on Jerusalem, bisected by the 'Green Line' of 1967

While Netanyahu has flirted with the idea before — particularly in instances such as now when he is putting the onus on Palestinians to come to the table without preconditions — his comments about Jerusalem often reject the possibility of ever dividing the city. Here’s Netanyahu’s exchange on the Charlie Rose’s interview show last night:

NETANYAHU: I want Jerusalem a united city for sure. But that’s the way I go — These are not preconditions for negotiations. They’re positions in the negotiations. The final positions come out after a negotiation. I don’t think it makes sense, and I think it’s just not wise, it’s even silly, to come forward and say well I’ll offer this percent, you know, with a decimal point –

CHARLIE ROSE: Of land.

NETANYAHU: Of land. That’s what the negotiations are for.

Watch the video:

In the speeches he mentions in the clip, Netanyahu indicates that he will not accept a divided Jerusalem in any peace deal. At Bar-Ilan University in June 2009, Netanyahu said in a “permanent agreement,” one of Israel’s “needs” was “Jerusalem remaining the united capital of Israel.” In the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, on May 16, 2011, Netanyahu said he was guided by the “principle” of a united Jerusalem. And a week later, speaking to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Netanyahu said:

Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians. But I believe with creativity and goodwill a solution can be found.

Netanyahu’s position, though, has wavered tremendously between the above softer-hard-line and the hard-hard-line. The closest he’s come to staking out the same position he did last night was in July 2010 before audiences of an American-Jewish organization conference and Fox News, saying that Jerusalem is “one of the issues that will have to be negotiated.”

But in both January and December of that year — six months on either side of his July comments — Netanyahu and his office explicitly rejected the notion of ever dividing Jerusalem. Two months before his July American appearences, Netanyahu appeared at a holiday called Jerusalem Day, celebrating the 1967 unification of the city. He told Israeli crowds that Israel “will never again allow Jerusalem to become a separated, bleak and divided city.”

On Jerusalem Day this year, Netanyahu again took the harder line, telling crowds that “nothing more holy to us than Jerusalem” and its “unity,” and pledging again that “Jerusalem will never be divided.”

With all the flip-flopping, assessing exactly where Netanyahu stands on Jerusalem — whether it will “never” be divided or is part of the final status issues for negotiations — remains to be seen. But his latest comments, to an American television audience, seem to indicate that he’s open to giving a future Palestinian state sovereignty over Arab parts of East Jerusalem. If that’s the case, his position matches up exactly with President Obama, raising questions about the attacks on the President by Netanyahu’s closest stateside allies for being a “divide(r)” of Jerusalem.

Tzipi Livni

The United States is making sure it won’t be singled out but how are we helping ourselves? We now need to initiate the political process. (Prime Minster Benjamin) Netanyahu tried to prevent this and now the Palestinians are at the United Nations.

Livni emphasized the importance of Israel’s friendship with the U.S., especially in light of the growing regional isolation faced by the Jewish state. She warned:

Next to all these enemies Israel has friends, and at the top of that list is United States, who is willing to guarantee Israel’s security. They don’t understand Israel’s policy, they don’t understand why the stubbornness over settlements, they don’t believe the prime minister of Israel when he says ‘two states’ but doesn’t do anything about it. And this saddens me because I am a citizen of the state.

While blasting Netanyahu’s policies and his intransigence in the peace process, she urged him to reverse course and save an increasingly untenable Israeli position. She said:

It is not yet too late to stop the process. It demands understanding of what happens when there is no process, and it also demands bravery to make a decision. I am skeptic, but perhaps this week you will succeed in rising above this terrible coalition.

Her comments, which roundly denounced Netanyahu’s failure to freeze settlement expansion or enter into good-faith negotiations with Palestinian negotiators, challenged the Likud party led government’s “story it is selling regarding the current reality” facing Israel in the Middle East. She said:

The first part [of the story] says everything is alright. The second part says that everyone is against us: (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) Abu Mazen joined forces with Hamas, (Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan is an Islamist and in Egypt it is impossible to know what will happen, everyone is anti-Semitic and all that’s left [for Israel] to do is to wait and see what will happen. Israel is indeed correct, but the government is mistaken.

Abbas has made clear his intentions to seek a recognition of a Palestinian state, and the Obama administration has all but guaranteed a U.S. veto of the resolution. But Livni’s remarks give voice to a segment of the Israeli political and security establishment who have run out of patience with Netanyahu’s hard-line policies and lack of progress in the all-but completely stalled peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in late 2009 that he supports the creation of a Palestinian state — though one that is, as CAP’s Matt Duss noted, “so severely circumscribed that it’s unlikely that any Palestinian leader could accept it and hope to retain Palestinian popular support.” While Netanyahu has never offered any concrete, substantive plan on how to implement the creation of a Palestinian state, his rhetoric since suggests that he has no real interest in pursuing this policy. In May, Netanyahu spoke before a fawning U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill and made a series of arguments that would make a two-state solution impossible.

But the main obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state is Jewish Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Netanyahu has not made any serious effort to stop them. The prime minister’s settlement freeze last year lasted only 10 months. Since the freeze ended in September 2010, settlement construction in the West Bank jumped 660 percent and the Israeli group Peace Now found recently that there has been “nearly 2 times more construction in the settlements than in Israel.” Peace Now has mapped Israeli settlements in the West Bank with Jewish settlements and municipal areas in blue and light blue, respectively (click here for a larger version):

With settlers in the West Bank increasing at such a rapid pace, how would a two-state solution practically be implemented? Israel would have to evacuate tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from the West Bank (estimates put the number of settlers living there at around 500,000). Israel forcibly evacuated just 6,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and Netanyahu has vowed never to repeat such a scenario. “I won’t evacuate settlements. Those understandings are invalid and unimportant,” he said in 2009.

So the creation of a Palestinian state requires that Israel forcibly evacuate tens of thousands of settlers from the West Bank while Netanyahu has shown no interest in stopping Israeli settlement expansion or evacuating settlers that are already there. So what’s next?

As CBS News’ Bob Simon noted in a report on the two-state solution for 60 Minutes back in 2009, “Demographers predict that within 10 years, Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state, the Israelis would have three options, none of them good”:

They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank. They could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option, but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could inflict apartheid, have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians. But apartheid regimes don’t have a very long life.

Lee Smith

Gates is upset because, while the White House has provided the Israelis with “access to top-quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing,” the administration hasn’t gotten what it really wants in exchange—movement on the peace process, according to Goldberg. Of course, the Israelis haven’t gotten what they really want either—action on Iran—and the Pentagon’s munificence is partly intended to deter the Israelis from taking matters into their own hands.

Smith seems to think “action on Iran” can only possibly mean a military attack, revealing both his designs and what he thinks the Israelis want. But his analysis is nonetheless off the mark. In fact, the Obama administration has taken many wide-ranging steps both to slow down the Iranian nuclear program and find a solution that averts military action.

For instance, the United Nations Security Council, shepherded by the U.S. in a renewed era of Obama multilateral diplomacy, passed sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. This May, a U.N. Experts Panel said the sanctions “are constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.”

There’s also, as Smith notes, been great military and intelligence cooperation on Iran between the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s government. Smith generally mentions the cooperation in passing, but fails to address perhaps its most dramatic facet: when Israel and the U.S. worked together on the Stuxnet computer virus that damaged Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Exactly how much is uncertain, but no serious analysts challenge that it did slow the program. After the Stuxnet cyber-attack was widely reported, legendary Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan pushed back Israel’s estimate for when Iran would get a bomb to 2015 at the earliest.

President Obama also changed the tone of discourse with Iran from the hawkish Bush administration approach that spurned talking and rejected cooperation, which led to even more sour relations. Negotiations over the nuclear program and other subjects have yet to yield fruits, but, according to Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, the Obama approach has helped in other ways. In 2010, Ganji spoke with CAP analyst Matt Duss and told him Obama’s shift opened up the political space that made possible the rise of the Green opposition movement:

Asked about the impact of President Obama’s approach to Iran, Ganji praised the change in rhetoric, and suggested that it helped create a favorable environment for the Iranian democracy movement. “Obama offered a dialog with the Iran,” Ganji said, “and this change in discourse immediately gave rise to that outpouring of sentiment against the Islamic Republic last year.”

There can be little doubt that Israel wishes for regime change in Iran, yet giving breathing space to the most broad indigenous opposition movement to emerge in Iran since the fall of the Shah in 1979 doesn’t seem to be enough for Smith.

If by “action,” Smith is limiting himself to talking about bombing Iran, he ought to drop the euphemism and say so. And, indeed, the Obama administration has not gone that route, probably because analysts — even military analysts at pro-Israel think tanks — widely agree that such a course would be dangerous and potentially disastrous. Only neocons seem to disagree.

What Goldberg didn’t mention is the historical and conceptual context for Gates’ remarks. Indeed, Gates is not the first senior American official to express concern that the protraction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and the perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel on this issue — was offering few, if any, dividends for U.S. security or its own regional interests.

Back in March, 2010, Gen. David Petraeus made waves when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had immediate implications for the U.S.’s ability to pursue its interests in the Middle East. He named some of these problems:

Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

Israel hawks quickly denounced Petraeus’ comments and have continued to attack a straw man argument that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wouldn’t solve all challenges facing the U.S. in the Middle East.

But Petraeus wasn’t the only senior U.S. official to endorse the concept of “linkage” between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the longer-term strategic interests of the U.S. in the Middle East. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CENTCOM commander Gen. James Mattis, and Adm. Michael Mullen — via a WikiLeaks cable — have voiced endorsements of this concept.

While Jeffrey Goldberg — who has a history of rejecting linkage — carefully reports on Gates’ anger with Netanyahu for delivering “nothing in return” for security guarantees, access to weapons, and intelligence sharing, he is careful to sidestep the obvious next question. Why does Gates feel strongly about Netanyahu refusing to “grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank”?

Goldberg doesn’t engage that topic. It might be because Gates shares the emerging consensus of the U.S.’s top military and political leadership that Israel’s continued settlement expansion and intransigence at the negotiating table is doing real damage to the Obama administration’s attempts to pursue a wide range of military and political interests in the Middle East.

Via the Israeli news site YNet, “The Prime Minister’s Office stated that the phone conversation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama was ‘friendly and touched on political and economic issues that are on both countries’ agenda.’”

The White House issued this readout of the call:

President Obama spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu today to consult on regional issues and efforts to achieve Middle East peace. The Prime Minister expressed appreciation for U.S. support for Israel’s security, in particular the Iron Dome short-range rocket and mortar defense system. The two leaders agreed to continue to work closely together to address common security concerns.

And here’s how Israel thanked its most important ally this morning:

Israel’s interior minister gave final authorization to build 1,600 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem and will approve 2,700 more in days, officials said Thursday, detailing a plan that could complicate diplomatic efforts to dissuade Palestinians from declaring statehood at the United Nations.

The announcement drew immediate criticism from the Palestinians, and from Israel’s leading anti-settlement group, which accused the government of seizing on mass protests over housing costs to give economic justification to the always explosive issue of building in the holy city.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office knew the construction plans were moving ahead, Interior Ministry spokesman Roi Lachmanovich said. An earlier approval for the 1,600-apartment project embarrassed Netanyahu and caused a diplomatic rift with the U.S. because it coincided with a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

In addition to the Obama administration’s unprecedented military support for Israel, and its significantly deepened intelligence cooperation with Israel on the Iranian nuclear issue, the Obama administration is currently using up an enormous amount of diplomatic energy and capital on Israel’s behalf in trying to head off the Palestinians’ bid for UN recognition.

The Netanyahu government’s idea of gratitude is to announce thousands of new settlement homes in occupied areas of Jerusalem, further undermining the moderate Palestinian leadership, and embarrassing (once again) its key patron and gratuitously complicating its efforts to achieve its goals.

Ehud Barak and Barack Obama

Despite the hollow argument, Netanyahu’s allies on the U.S. neoconservative right were happy to oblige his attack. The Bill Kristol-led Emergency Committee for Israel said Obama was “stepping away” from the U.S.-Israel relationship — though ECI’s “director” had found nothing wrong with Obama’s speech.

Then, it turned out, most Israelis and Palestinians actually supported a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines, as did Israel’s opposition leader. What’s more, Obama’s formulation was defended by AIPAC, the flagship pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.

And now yet another pillar of the farce that has been Israeli right wing and American neoconservative criticism of Obama’s handling of the U.S. relationship with Israel is collapsing. In an interview on Fox News, Israel’s foreign minister (and former prime minister) Ehud Barak laid to rest the myth that the Obama administration is casting aside the U.S.’s special relationship with Israel.

Baited by Fox host Greta Van Sustren on whether “Israelis [are] disenchanted a little bit with the Obama administration,” Barak responded:

BARAK: No. Our countries are good friends. And I’m the minister of defense, I can tell you that I can hardly remember — I was in uniform for decades — I can hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now.

And it’s true that not all the Israelis are really happy with the positions of the administration, but I should tell you honestly that the president didn’t say that Israel should go back to the borders of ’67. He made it very clear that he thinks that Palestinians deserve a state of their own. We also believe in two states, Israel side by side — secure Israel side by side with a demilitarized Palestinian state that will basically have the same area that’s West Bank and Gaza Strip had before ’67 with certain swaps, with understanding of the transformation on the ground. [...] Some security consideration we take into account. I don’t think that contradicts what the president said.

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This, from the hawkish defense minister from Netanyahu’s own government, should finally make crystal clear that those in Congress and elsewhere who went after Obama’s comments were misled by a teeny cohort of politically motivated politicians from Netanyahu’s Likud Party and their allies in neoconservative punditry. Perhaps that’s why some of these pundits have been unable to answer questions about their stances. The whole thing was little more than politically-motivated spin, a public relations theater for far right audiences.

But with the Israeli prime minister taking a patently dishonest stand to lead the charge against a U.S. president that has, by almost all accounts, vowed nothing short of full diplomatic support for Israel and broadened the security relationship to heretofore unseen heights, maybe we should be asking who exactly is trying to drive a wedge in the U.S.-Israel relationship here.