My Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg just scored an extensive interview with President Obama in which Obama says to Iran and Israel, "As President of the United States, I don't bluff."
Goldberg's preamble is important and must-read, but the interview itself is vital and gives one a good sense of both Obama's strategic strengths and weaknesses.
The decision of the White House to talk to Goldberg reflects their desire to speak to what Obama defined in the interview as "the Israeli people, and. . .the pro-Israel community in this country" less than a week before the annual Washington meeting of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 
This was not an interview designed to warn Iran of the consequences of proceeding down a nuclear weapons acquisition track. This read more like a combination of assurances to the American Jewish community that Obama was a serious national security hawk on Iran during an election year. It felt like pandering -- not too dissimilar to presidential candidate Obama's speech to AIPAC in 2008 when he made the remarkable, provocative, Arab-offending statement, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
During the interview, Obama expressed dismay that despite standing with Israel on challenge after challenge -- every key issue facing the country -- that many doubted the sincerity of his support for Israel. The President sounded emotionally 'needy', wanting validation that the American Jewish community and Israelis really, really liked him and understand that he's on their side.
This is not presidential; this is not the way the President of the United States should be positioning himself -- and it's clear that the emotional and political leverage that Netanyahu has engineered over Obama has had a real impact. 
Israel is a client state of the United States -- and while it has its own interests, Israel's security is deeply entwined with the strategic choices the United States makes, which is what this Iran debate is about.
Israel, under Netanyahu's leadership, seems to want to drive a dynamic in which it demonstrates its power by compelling the President to attack Iran on its behalf, to set up triggers and red-lines, and railroad track that lead to a binary choice of bombing Iran or acquiescing to and appeasing a new nuclear weapons power. This is neither in Israel's real interests -- nor America's.
Obama tries to convey this stating that Iran is "self-interested", i.e. rational. He says that over the last three decades, Iran's leadership has demonstrated that it does care about the regime's survival and is sensitive to the opinions of their citizens and disturbed by Iran's general global isolation.
Obama states:
They know, for example, that whenBut what Obama seems not to understand in the well-meaning description of his attempted Iran strategy is that he is actually creating a railroad track to disaster. He conveys in the interview a disinterest in containment, suggesting that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon changes the world and triggers a rampant and dangerous proliferation in an unstable part of the global neighborhood.
these kinds of sanctions are applied, it puts a world of hurt on them.
They are able to make decisions based on trying to avoid bad outcomes
from their perspective. So if they're presented with options that lead
to either a lot of pain from their perspective, or potentially a better
path, then there's no guarantee that they can't make a better decision.
Obama needs to call former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and have a long chat. President Obama, Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough and other members of the NSC team often reference Scowcroft as one of their north stars on strategic policy -- but word is that the President has rarely connected with the sage strategist. And then the President should check in with Zbigniew Brzezinski who could help the President understand the chess board in front of him a bit better.
Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with Obama was serious and reasoned -- but the one area that I think he missed, or didn't give Obama a chance to unload on Israel's strategic mistake in not doing more on the Palestine peace effort. -- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons
Follow Steve Clemons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SCClemons
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Thank goodness for the humanity of the Jewish state :
Israel offers to send humanitarian aid to Syrian civilians
Acting under instructions of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman, the MFA Deputy Director General for International Organizations and the United Nations Eviatar Manor contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross and suggested that Israel transfer humanitarian aid to Syria under Red Cross auspices. The Committee’s representatives in Israel stated that they will respond with an appropriate reply once they have examined the population’s needs and requirements.
What a joke
The pandering and puffery comes from the people who defend the Arab Spring - not Obama.
American troops will now become a target of every Muslim in Afghanistan no matter what side they are on because of the accidental burning of the Koran. There is no good reason for America's troops to remain in Afghanistan and become targets of every enraged Muslim and anyone who says otherwise is a damn liar.
What Netanyahu is doing by talking so much about attacking Iran is inserting himself into the American presidential election process. He is very eager to see Republicans in the White House again because Republicans have given him everything he wanted and agreed to his every wish. By threatening an attack on Iran without notice to the USA he is trying to make Pres. Obama look weak and warning him that he (Bibi) can reshuffle the election cards in the USA at will. Imagine such an attack on Iran by Israel without American input at the height of the election, in September or October. A time bomb.
By he way, Israeli President Shimon Peres recently stated very publicly that there has been no President ever with whom Israel has been more satisfied than Barack Obama. Peres' intelligent and calm voice should be heeded in the USA.
Netanyahu is playing some very dangerous political games, with domestic politics both in Israel and the USA. He deserves to have his fingers severely rapped by both Democrats and Republicans. But don't count on the latter to be reasonable. They are presently only too happy to be having a love affair with the extreme rightwing of Israeli politics.
This is a very sensitive situation full of danger, one that could lead to an international conflagration. It is important to keep cool, as Pres. Obama can do best, and de-code what Netanyahu really means when he continually threatens to make war on Iran. His bluster needs to be rejected forcefully.
Things are much more complicated than a simple placing of Likud and AIPAC on an enemy's list. As I wrote, Israelis are mostly not in agreement with Netanyahu's stance on Iran. Nor, for that matter, on how to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. But he is in power. He is also not the worst possible ally for the USA since he spent many formative years in Pennsylvania, speaks fluent English, and is familiar with and favorably disposed to the ins and outs of American politics and needs in general.
Your suggestion that the USA allow Israel to hit Iran and then "let them stand alone" is not realistic. Nixon tried that in 1973 and had to change his tune. It is a big illusion on your part to think that the USA would ever permit "Iranian, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syrian [!] and Russian armaments" to pound Israel's "prized infrastructure", as you put it with a bit of what I detect as Schadenfreude-in-advance-of-the-fact (which will never occur).
To say that Netanyahu is "the most dangerous man" in a Middle East containing Assad, Nasrallah, Achmadinejad, and various terrorists is about as out of tune with reality as it gets. Netanyahu is a conservative who is in coalition with other conservatives more extreme than himself. That he is in cohoots with the ever more conservative Republicans should be obvious. Given that situation, President Obama is the best alternative for keeping Netanyahu in line and preventing a meltdown in the Middle East. Believing that the whole thing boils down to a Likud/AIPAC conspiracy against the USA is just as blind and useless as most other conspiracy theories.
How can anyone negotiate anything while those despicable proclamations still stand?
Iran has not invaded another nation for 200 years. Knowing that Israel has 200-300 nukes, it's easy to see why other Mideast nations want nukes as a deterrent. It's always a good idea to remember exactly which nation is the only one to ever use nukes!
Just sit down and LISTEN to them and then offer compromises.
As for the destruction of Israel, until ti actually happens we should just ignore the rhetoric. If they really, really mean it, there is nothing the US or Israel can do - it will happen one way of another.
One way to minimize the chances of the destruction of Israel is for Israel to NEGOTIATE (there is that word again) and do what is necessary to live in the neighborhood they have invaded, because it is completely impossible for Israel to remain undefeated forever (it has NEVER happened in the 50,000 years humans have existed, so it is very, very unlikely now).
Anti-Israel writers like Clemons, always ready to blame tiny Israel for all of the problems of the vast middle east, read Obama's reasoned argument as some sort of capitulation to AIPAC. It's not. Obama knows better than the rest of us how dangerous Iran is, it is not AIPAC that is causing him to act as he does, it is reasoned analysis.
Maybe you could call the Iranian peace camp, or the Arab peace camp and ask their opinion. If you can find them. They are either in jail or a local cemetery.
There is nothing new this time around.
He has visited Egypt several times, Turkey, and several other Arabic countries to give support of these countries during negotiations with Israel. In Turkey Barack Hussein Obama II offered a speech to a country that still hasn't admitted to killing over a million Armenian christians (its illegal to even mention it), apologizing for our actions against muslims.
How many times has the President visited Israel? None
What has he accomplished with this type of unilateral negotiating? Nothing
Who negotiates in such an ignorant, unilateral, and ineffective manner? President Obama
Our president doesnt have to visit Israel to be supportive.. he just has our congress's annual indoctrination trip .. No president has done more for the security of Israel since Truman... and you neocon lovers cant stop until we are bankrupt and have lost all credibility as an honest broker in the region.. read some history.. this type of conflict feeds the right in Israel and the US...and is why we are no closer to justice for any of the people in the region.. Again you wouldnt understand that negotiation is not dictating all the objectives.. it involves a clear mind .. something our president has done so well.. but if you want war elect the republicans-Likudites
As for visiting Israel, why should Obama go to that terrible place?
The US continues to align itself with the wishes and wants of the Israeli state, even when the two countries strategic aims are different. How long will the tail continue to wag the dog? It is high time the
US woke up and started to exert real pressure on "Yahu" and his cohorts for justice and human rights for ALL people that live in the middle east and not just the ones that live between the disputed borders of the state of Israel.