One of, if not the biggest, Republican talking points about the nuclear deal with Iran is that it’s bad deal because it’s bad deal for Israel.
We know this deal is bad for Israel, Republicans say, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says it is.
Now, there’s nothing the mainstream media likes more than regurgitating right-wing talking points, so this kind of thinking gets treated like gospel here in Washington, but in reality it’s just plain wrong.
This isn’t some big secret, either.
It’s right there in the opinion pages of Haaretz, Israel’s version of The New York Times.
Earlier this week, Haaretz published a shocking editorial that accused the Netanyahu government of “silencing” a group of intelligence chiefs who disagreed with Netanyahu's position on the Iran deal
According to that editorial, “There are those in the Intelligence Corps, including those in the research division dealing with Iran, who have a very positive view of the nuclear agreement… but… they have been swallowed up as if they had never existed... [T]hese views," they concluded, "are being concealed from the public.”
In other words, Netanyahu is pulling a George W. Bush on Iran.
This raises the question: Why would someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, someone who claims to care about the health and safety of the Israeli people, put politics over policy?
Why wouldn’t he listen to his intelligence chiefs and go along with a deal that pretty much every single nuclear expert in the world says will stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
The answer is simpler than you might think.
Despite all his talk about Israel and its safety, Benjamin Netanyahu is really only loyal to one cause: the neocon cause.
