Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday (video embedded below). The primary focus of his interview with host David Gregory was the current turmoil in Iraq.
MTP: Netanyahu on Iraq: "Both sides are enemies of the US. You don't strengthen one – you weaken both" #Iraq #MTP #Israel #tcot
— Ashley D. Bell (@AshleyBellR) June 22, 2014
In response to a question about whether President Obama’s approach would likely strengthen Iran, Netanyahu replied:
Look, I think it’s a complicated situation. There are no easy answers. But what you’re seeing in the Middle East today, in Iraq and in Syria, is the stark hatreds between radical Shiites, in this case led by Iran, and radical Sunnis led by Al Qaeda and ISIS and others.
Now, both of these camps are enemies of the United States. And when your enemies are fighting each other, don’t strengthen either one of them; weaken both. And I think by far the worst outcome that could come out of this is that one of these factions, Iran, would come out with nuclear weapons capability. That would be a tragic mistake. It would make everything else pale in comparison.
When asked to be more specific about a strategy for Iraq, Netanyahu replied:
I think that there are two actions you have to take. One is to take the actions that you deem necessary to counter the ISIS takeover of Iraq, and the second is not to allow Iran to dominate Iraq the way it dominated Lebanon and Syria. So you actually have to work on both sides. As I say, you try to weaken both. There are actions that could be taken.
Netanyahu also warned that the worst-case scenario for the Middle East would be for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, “Because those weapons, unlike mortars and machine guns that can kill thousands, and chemical weapons that kill tens of thousands, these weapons, nuclear weapons, could kill millions. That should be prevented at all cost.”
Later on in the broadcast Netanyahu criticized the Presbyterian church’s vote to divest from three companies that do business in Israel.
In Do ‘Syria,’ ‘Iraq’ and ‘Lebanon’ Still Exist? that appeared in the February 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine Jonathan Spyer identified the dynamic that is now playing itself out, “[t]his increasingly violent rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, intensified by American withdrawal from the region, has helped turn a conflict that was once cold into an increasingly hot cross-border sectarian war.”
[Photo: NBC News ]