And
that position, that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue – that stopping
settlement construction – would somehow magically mollify the Arab world and
get it to put its shoulder to the wheel regarding Iran has been a constant
thread throughout the Obama regime. Here it was popularly dubbed “Yitzhar for
Bushehr.”
What the WikiLeaks cache revealed, however, was that
this argument was a fabrication.
Obama was
obviously well aware of the views of these leaders, most of whom he personally
met, yet he continued to propagate what he must have known to be a
falsehood.
To
link the two issues – the conflict with the Palestinians, and Iran – was to
badly muddle the issue. Why exactly Obama felt compelled to
do so is one of the key questions the WikiLeaks documents raised in relation
to our region.