03/02/12
Can Israel Trust the United States When It Comes to Iran? Yossi Klein Halevi
When Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Barack Obama on
Monday, the main issue will be trust. Obama will ask that Israel trust America’s
determination to stop Iran, and trust that when he says all options are on the
table he means it. Netanyahu will likely be thinking about May 1967.
In late May 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol dispatched his foreign minister, Abba Eban, to Washington. Egyptian and Syrian troops were pressing on Israel’s borders; Egypt had imposed a naval blockade on the Straits of Tiran, Israel’s shipping route to the east. Eban’s request of President Lyndon Johnson was that America honor its commitment to back military action if Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran. That commitment had been made by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1957, to secure Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai desert following the 1956 Suez War. Only a declaration by Johnson that he intended to immediately open the straits to Israeli shipping even at the risk of war—one idea was for the U.S. to lead an international flotilla—could stop a unilateral Israeli strike. Though Johnson was viscerally pro-Israel, he proved unable or unwilling to honor Dulles’ commitment. Preoccupied with Vietnam, Johnson wasn’t ready to support another war, let alone initiate one.
Even if Barack Obama is truly the pro-Israel president his Jewish supporters claim he is, the Johnson precedent tells us that it may not matter. Like Johnson, Obama presides over a nation wary of another military adventure, especially in the Middle East. According to Israeli press reports, Netanyahu intends to ask Obama to state—beyond the vague formulation that all options are on the table—that the U.S. will use military force if Iran is about to go nuclear. But few here expect Obama to make that policy explicit.
What the world remembers of the Six Day War era is Israel’s military victory in June 1967. But these days Israelis are recalling the vulnerability of May 1967, in the weeks that preceded the victory.
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