JERUSALEM – To Americans, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must look like some invading giant. Backed by an army of AIPAC lobbyists and Republican presidential candidates, he came to Washington this week and put President Barack Obama on the defensive, using threats of imminent war on Iran to coerce his host into threatening his own war on the Islamic republic, albeit further down the road than Netanyahu would like.

At home, however, Netanyahu is not so strong, not as a prospective wartime prime minister, at any rate. Having no formidable rival, he is secure in office, but his public image, more and more, is that of an indecisive, deceitful, endlessly suspicious leader who’s under the sway of his wife, Sara. In a series of scandals in the prime minister’s office, the last one surfacing just before he left for Washington, he comes off like a weaker version of Richard Nixon.

What’s more, signs are that he doesn’t have the Israeli public behind him for a unilateral attack on Iran, and his military/intelligence chiefs, along with the great majority of his cabinet ministers, are showing no eagerness to board the war train. Just three weeks ago Israel seemed to be leaning hard toward war. Since then, though, there’s been a softening of Israel’s posture (if not Netanyahu’s) – due to the scandals, rising American opposition to a solo Israeli attack, and the sinking in to the public that the war they’ve been hearing about for years may actually be at hand.

So the leverage Netanyahu purports to wield over Obama – a readiness to attack Iran in the coming months unless he is satisfied that the president will do so himself by an acceptable deadline – may not be all it seems. It’s questionable whether the Israeli leader, whatever his intentions, has the necessary domestic backing to start such a daunting war in the near future, especially with the president promising repeatedly that if all else fails, America will do the job.

http://972mag.com/author/larryd/