Israel won’t strike Iran alone, no matter how much it hates the nuclear deal

[geek tragedy]

4. the only 'enemy' Netanyahu is willing to declare war on is Obama.

The Europeans have had enough of the Israeli shrillitude, even if the US is willing to tolerate such childish behavior by the ingrates.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, slammed Netanyahu’s recalcitrance and defended the deal as “responsible.” He said, “Israel should also take a closer look at it and not criticize the agreement in a very coarse way.”

Worse, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who will be in Jerusalem on Thursday, betrayed his lack of sympathy for Netanyahu’s hard line: “The question you have to ask yourself is what kind of a deal would have been welcomed in Tel Aviv. The answer, of course, is that Israel doesn’t want any deal with Iran. Israel wants a permanent state of stand-off, and I don’t believe that’s in the interests of the region.”

The significance of the statement is not principally in its uncommon public expression of exasperation but in the seemingly offhand reference to Israel’s commercial capital. It is almost unheard of for a representative of an Israeli ally to use Tel Aviv as shorthand for the state, which claims Jerusalem as its “eternal, unified capital.”

The offense to Israeli sensibilities on the eve of a state visit is huge.

Now that they've (maybe) begun to turn the corner on Ukraine, Iran, and Greece, the EU will turn to Israel/Palestine, and the Israelis have pretty much burned all their bridges.