Obama Sets Netanyahu Straight While Debunking The Myth Of Regime Change

President Obama isn’t playing games. The President debunked the myth of regime change while letting Netanyahu know that his condition for a good deal is never going to happen during an interview with NPR.

The President answered a question that went to the heart of Netanyahu and the Republican argument for “regime change” in Iran, “The notion that we would condition Iran not getting nuclear weapons in a verifiable deal on Iran recognizing Israel is really akin to saying that we won’t sign a deal unless the nature of the Iranian regime completely transforms. And that is, I think, a fundamental misjudgment. I want to return to this point: We want Iran not to have nuclear weapons precisely because we can’t bank on the nature of the regime changing. That’s exactly why we don’t want to have nuclear weapons. If suddenly Iran transformed itself to Germany or Sweden or France then there would be a different set of conversations about their nuclear infrastructure.”

President Obama’s underlying point was related to the fundamental flaw in the neocon regime change argument. Republicans and Netanyahu have argued for years that regime change is the way to deal with Iran, but as Obama made clear, there is no guarantee that the next regime in Iran will be any better than the current one.

The goal of these negotiations is not to change Iran. It is to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. Netanyahu is trying to set up an impossible goal in order to wreck the negotiations.

Netanyahu has wasted any influence that he might have had, and has been reduced to offering criticism from the peanut gallery. President Obama is clearly in the driver’s seat. Netanyahu has become a bit player in this story. The Israeli Prime Minister won reelection at the cost of diminishing his power on the world stage.