1. Rope-a-dope: Israel’s eyes are laser-focused on the tanker tussle going on in the Persian Gulf, even if the Jewish state doesn’t have a proverbial dog in a fight that seems mainly centered between the UK and Iran.
- The affair is at the top of most newspaper and news sites Sunday, including hyperbole calling it “a peak in tensions” (from the alarmist Rotter.net news forum), which is wishful thinking.
- For some reason, the image of Iranians sliding down a rope onto the ship from the helicopter is like catnip to Israeli pundits.
- “The Iranians are trying to climb [escalating tensions] without ripping the rope, but if it does tear, the American response will not be long in coming,” Channel 13’s Alon Ben David writes.
- “The sparring between Washington and Tehran seems on the verge of turning into a real slugfest,” writes Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el under the headline “The rope is tensing.”
- While he notes all the reasons that conflict is still far off, he adds that “the risk that a tug of war becomes an exchange of military blows has become more real.”
- In Israel Hayom (“Iran tenses the rope,”) columnist Yoav Limor doesn’t think war is necessarily in the offing.
- “Assuming Iran does not increases its breaches of the nuclear deal and harm Western interest (especially closing the Strait of Hormuz), the sides will continue to take small actions with inflammatory rhetoric alongside them, while leaving a wide opening for talks — open or covert — on a new nuclear deal.” READ MORE
