Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech On Iranian Nukes Did Have an Audience and it Was a Lot More Than One Person

On Monday, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu gave a stunning presentation of Iranian nuclear design documents stolen right from under the noses of the mullah-ocracy by Mossad. In all, there were over a half-ton of paper documents and electronic storage media lifted from a secure warehouse and smuggled to Jerusalem.

Two major lines of attack have been developed by the Iran nuclear deal echo chamber that still responds the Ben Rhodes’s commands. The first line is that there is nothing new in the document dump. This is an utter lie. The very fact that the documents existed is new and it contradicts the assurances Iran gave to signatories on the deal and to the IAEA.

The second line of attack is that the only audience Netanyahu has was Donald Trump and, as we all have been told, the only way to engage him is by being on Fox and Friends.

Netanyahu’s cheap theatrics fall flat, but alas, he has an audience of one — Trump
Via @mondoweiss#Israel#Iran pic.twitter.com/nSDSGIeRyT

— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) May 1, 2018

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran Deal speech might have convinced the only person who matters https://t.co/gT8jvU0cnY

— TIME (@TIME) May 2, 2018

Mr Netanyahu’s presentation seemed aimed at an audience of one: President Donald Trump https://t.co/8SgWj7oybE

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 1, 2018

Audience of one diplomacy? https://t.co/Tx1U8XFr7i

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 1, 2018

Analysis: Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to an audience of one with Iran revelations https://t.co/8MC7CRA3b6 pic.twitter.com/smzcxbaCOX

— National Post (@nationalpost) May 2, 2018

Netanyahu’s presentation was just so much fluff, intended for an audience of one. Neither it or the WH typo can or should obscure Iran deal stakes. My latest: https://t.co/5kKl0jzRwu

— John Kirby (@johnfkirby63) May 1, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran revelations were aimed at an audience of one https://t.co/71GHibdYLq pic.twitter.com/aqDLrLiTlH

— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) May 1, 2018

Strong thread. Trouble is, @netanyahu has an audience of one: Trump https://t.co/3IWHkkyj6M

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) May 1, 2018

“They had an audience of one person, President Trump” – Jarrett Blanc, formerly of the US State Department, gives his view on the motives behind Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran presentation #newsnight pic.twitter.com/QCrK9qNIi7

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) May 1, 2018

If you’ve followed the media for any period of time you recognize this pattern. This the the media groupthink plus access to JounoList 2.0. They have a cute phrase “audience of one” and they repeat it like some sort of Hindu mantra. Who can forget the commentary in 2000 when George Bush selected Dick Cheney to be his running mate.

And this, from the summer of 2015, on why Donald Trump was inevitably going to fade away:

The “audience of one” is simply bullsh**. We know that Trump had already been briefed on the Israeli operation and the data. Trump needed the speech to pave the way for his decision–which, my guess, was already made–to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. But there was a target audience. In fact, there were several.

The presentation was important because it showed the Western world, in stark terms, what their governments and the IAEA have been too craven to admit. Iran lied about their nuclear weapons program before the deal. And they are still lying about the deal. There is going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in Berlin because of the amount of Iranian cash they are going to lose. Now the German people have an idea of why the deal was bad. More importantly, Netanyahu, in coordination with the White House, chose to release the documents as part of the debate over the continued US participation in the Iran nuclear deal.

3 Netanyahu spoke to Trump over the phone last Saturday and updated him he will publish the new intelligence later in the week. A day later he met in Tel-Aviv with Secretary of State Pompeo and gave him a similar update

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) May 1, 2018

4 An Israeli official said the timing of the publication was coordinated with the White House and the reason it was published this week was due to the May 12th deadline regarding the Iran deal

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) May 1, 2018

5 The Israeli official added that Israel wanted to publicly release its new intelligence after the visits made by French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel to the White House last week during which they tried to convince Trump not to withdraw from the Iran deal

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) May 1, 2018

Trump is going to take some political heat when he leaves the deal, this presentation went over the heads of the echo chamber gatekeepers and confirmed for millions of voters what they already knew.

The presentation was also aimed at the Arab world. It showed them that the Iranians are basically buffoons. It made them look ridiculous. And, of course, it reinforced the belief that is already deeply held in the Arab world that Mossad can do anything.

The third audience was Iran, both the people and the government. The presentation showed the people just how ineffectual and incompetent the government is. Though Western media stopped covering Iranian protests weeks ago, these protests have become a fact of life in Iran. If you are at all familiar with the overthrow of the Shah, there was a similar patter of regular protests over the span of a about a year that brought increasing concessions from the government until finally Ayatollah Khomeini was allowed to return from exile and the revolution got real. The demonstrations have already exposed political fault lines in the ruling clique and you can bet the theft of these documents will be great ammunition for those on the edge of power to use against those who are ruling.

Netanyahu’s speech should be seen as a strategic exercise that not only gave Trump cover at home to do what needs to be done, but it damaged the credibility of the Iranian regime throughout the Middle East.

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