Egyptian TV Host Begs Netanyahu To Bomb Iran

by JASmius



And Barack Obama would probably order U.S. forces to intercept and shoot down the attacking Israeli planes.

The world really has turned upside-down:

“Our dear friend Netanyahu. Please – Iran faces you and the Bushehr reactor faces you. Put your trust in God and bomb it. We are with you. And if you need fuel for the jets we will give it to you.”

Those were the words of Egyptian television presenter Tawfik Okasha, owner of the private television station Al-Faraeen. Okasha notedly despises both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. He openly advocates Arab tourism to Israel on his television station. Okasha is not the only Egyptian television host to speak out in support of Netanyahu. [emphases added]

True, Mr. Okasha isn't speaking for the Egyptian government in this.  But President el-Sisi did go so far as to speak at a Coptic Christian mass and is closing mosques by the tens of thousands to try and get a lid on rampant jihadism, so it's not much of a stretch to see him being sympathetic to (pro-Zionist!) sentiments of Mr. Okasha and others.

Yes, yes, I know, what if this is an attempt to set up the Israelis?  Encourage them to take out or at least set back the Iranian nuclear program and then when Bibi gives the order, Egypt springs the double-cross?  Well, if that is the case, the Saudis appear to be in on it as well:

Saudi Arabia has let Israel know that it is prepared to allow Israeli warplanes to fly over Saudi territory to bomb nuclear installations in Iran if that should prove necessary, Israel’s Channel Two has reported.

The station cited a “knowledgeable” European official in Brussels as saying “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran.”

The Jewish state and the Saudi kingdom, site of the holiest shrines in Islam, share a strategic concern over Iran’s pursuit of influence in the region and the possibility that it will produce nuclear weapons. Israel’s concern is focused on threats by Iranian leaders that it will be wiped off the map. Saudi Arabia, whose state religion is Sunni Islam, sees Iran as an aggressive Shiite opponent. Both are unwilling to countenance the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

Is this a burgeoning Arab-Israeli understanding?  No, not really.  Rather, I think, it is a classic case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".  I don't think Egypt or Saudi Arabia are any less fundamentally hostile to Israel in principle than they've always been - they're still Muslims, after all - but they've developed sufficient awareness and rationality to grasp that Israel's mere existence does not threaten their own.  Whereas the undisguised imperialist and genocidal intentions of the Iranian mullahgarchy are an existential threat to both.

Put another way, Cairo and Riyadh can live with the presence of a Jewish State - they have for almost sixty-seven years, after all.  But they cannot live with being dominated or outright conquered by their enormous Shiite neighbor.

There's a reason, after all, why the Saudis are going nuke-shopping in Pakistan, after all.  If the Israelis can buy them all some time, at the very least, that would be very much in the Kingdom's strategic interests.

And, of course, since any retaliatory consequences would fall more on the Jews than on them, so much the better, from their point of view.  Which is why we should be doing it and not the Israelis.

Strange bedfellows indeed, the novelty of which is not worth the upheavals to come.