Iran nuclear deal: Israel rages - and no one cares [View all]

[FarCenter]

It may be that a delicate diplomatic game is being played here. Iran could not, as a matter of principle, accept a deal that Israel thought was a good one so Israel was obliged to be hostile, goes that thinking.

Similarly, in the 1990s, the Democratic Union Party in Northern Ireland and its leader, Ian Paisley, the Netanyahu of Ulster politics, argued fiercely against the Good Friday agreement – but smiled cheerfully when he eventually sat down alongside Martin McGuinness.

If ones takes Israel's public position at face value, however, it is hard not to ask how it got itself into a position where its wishes could be ignored by its closest ally, the United States (an ally that according to popular opinion its Washington lobbies have in their pockets).

One answer might be the extraordinary, prickly, combative persona of Mr Netanyahu. One of the interesting things about his two terms as prime minister, in the late Nineties and now, has been the personal effect he has had on foreign governments and their representatives.

Other Israeli leaders like Ehud Olmert and even Ariel Sharon, who launched or took part in brutal assaults on Arab neighbours, were vilified by their enemies. Only Mr Netanyahu provoked such hostility in his friends.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10470998/Iran-nuclear-deal-Israel-rages-and-no-one-cares.html