Obama: We Told Israelis That They Don’t Have Green Light To Attack Iran
President Obama has now weighed in on the dust-up over whether Joe Biden gave the green light to an Israeli attack on Iran.
Strikingly, Obama not only said that the U.S. has not green-lighted such an attack; he also confirmed that his administration had privately informed the Israelis that they oppose such a move:
The United States is “absolutely not” giving Israel a green light to attack Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama told CNN Tuesday.
“We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East,” Obama said, referring to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
At risk of re-opening yesterday’s debate, Biden could have said something along these lines when pressed to say where the U.S. would stand if the Israelis decided to take action against Iran. That said, I’ll defer to Juan Cole, who knows far more about these matters than I do and says that Biden wasn’t green-lighting anything.
The more important thing here, unless I’m misreading this, is that Obama seems to be confirming that his administration directly informed the Israelis that they oppose an attack on Iran.
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I won’t go into this again, but needless to say I believe this was totally a manufactured controversy. Not necessarily by you Greg but just in general. And what I imagine will be coming shortly because President Obama had to respond to this manufactured controversy will be Bibi Netanyahu releasing a statement saying that Pres Obama does not control Israel. And not only that the Neo Cons will take this opportunity to hit Pres Obama for making it seem as if he has veto power over Israel’s national security. So effectively a faux controversy will probably become a semi genuine one at least for the Obama administration. I’m out.
I want to comment on why the President is fighting two wars on terrorism, when it’s not really our war!These extremists from my honest opinion, are fighting a holy jihad, or civil conflict,and it has been going on way before the Twin Towers were bombed!Because of injecting too much money into the war, we now face an economical crisis! Furthermore, i want to stress that i have been victimized by a high-profiled hate crime in the city of Cincinnati,Ohio for over twenty years with no local,state,or national intervention!So in concluding this segment, my question is:”How Mr.President,do you think you’re going to win two wars on terrorism, when you’re not fighting terrorists in your own country? That’s why i assume that American soldiers are coming out bloody and humiliated!-thyatirian-
Tip of the hat and a thank you for backing up a bit on the “Biden gave a green light” story – or at least refusing to continue it – and for acknowledging that there are other views. As sgwhiteinfla says, it may well be more of a “story” drummed up by someone (not you) who wanted a flashy headline than anything rationally connected to Biden’s comments during the interview.