Bibi Netanyahu and his allies in Washington daydream about making the perfect match after next year's American presidential election. In this fantasy a Republican president will team-up with the Likudnik Prime Minister to revitalize U.S. hegemony in the Middle East with Israel acting as its dependable sheriff. Israel will then receive a green light from the White House to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear military sites, to do a rerun of operation "cast lead" in Gaza, and to bomb Beirut in retaliation against Hezbollah.
Netanyahu, who has all but signed in as a political advisor for the 2012 Republican election campaign, is operating under the assumption that if Barack Obama is ousted from the White House next year he would be replaced by a clone of George W. Bush. Driven by faith and ideology, the support of Christian evangelists and the advice of neo-conservative foreign policy intellectuals, the new Republican president will embrace a Middle East policy agenda aligned with that the Likud-led government.
The Likud leader may have devised his Republican strategy after watching too much of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin denouncing the "Muslim" in the White House on FOX television and exchanging too many emails with his neoconservative pals who excoriate Obama for pursuing "anti-Israeli" policies.
For more: Leon T. Hadar: Netanyahu's Misguided Republican Strategy
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