EXPOSED – Panetta: US setting red lines on Iran would just paint US into a corner

Panetta is hitting back at Netanyahu over his demand for the US to set red lines on Iran:

TIMES OF ISRAEL – US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta added his voice to the chorus of American officials rebuffing Israel’s call for “red lines” on Iran, saying he did not want to see the US put in a corner.

“The fact is, look, presidents of the United States, prime ministers of Israel or any other country — leaders of these countries don’t have, you know, a bunch of little red lines that determine their decisions,” he told Foreign policy magazine in an interview published Friday night. …

“What [leaders] have are facts that are presented to them about what a country is up to, and then they weigh what kind of action is needed to be taken in order to deal with that situation,” he told the magazine. “I mean, that’s the real world. Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner.”

Red lines would put the US in a corner? No you doofus, it would put Iran in a corner. That’s what red lines are designed to do. For Panetta to take this defensive posture and argue against red lines is to admit that the Obama administration isn’t serious about Iran and that they refuse to be held to any standard.

I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Netanyahu is really saying that the Obama administration is all talk and no action, and by pushing them to set red lines he’s communicating to them that they need to take the Iranian nuclear threat seriously. And basically Panetta just confirmed that they aren’t really serious.

It looks like Netanyahu just outsmarted the Obama administration and exposed them.


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