Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has written in his memoir that he feared that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had too much influence on former US President George W. Bush. Gates says that he was especially worried by Olmert's efforts to persuade Washington to take care of Iran's nuclear program before Bush's term ended and the election of a new president.
Gates was never particularly liked by Israel's political leaders, both because of his reserved demeanor and his "lack of chumminess" in the words of one Israeli official who knew him, and because he gave the impression that he was not prepared to go to bat for Israeli requests on sensitive matters, even though he saw himself as a true friend of Israel.
In his memoir, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," which will be published shortly, Gates confirms his skeptical relationship with Jerusalem. In the excerpts of the book that have been released, he criticizes President Barack Obama and ridicules Vice President Joe Biden. However, on Wednesday, "The New York Times" literary critic Michiko Kakutani, published additional excerpts, including those in which Gates wrote about his concerns about Israel's effect on decision-making in Washington.
Some of the books most riveting passages cover Iran and Gates's worries about “the influence of the Israelis and the Saudis” on the White House, particularly the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and “their shared desire to have problems like Iran ‘taken care of’ while Bush was still president.”
Gates reiterated his warning about "looking for another war" while the US was already fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. He says that, at one point, he was so worried that Vice President Dick Cheney and Olmert would persuade Bush "to act or enable the Israelis to act” (that is, to take military action to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon) that he made an intense private call to Bush in which he argued “we must not make our vital interests in the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia hostage to another nation’s decisions - no matter how close an ally."
This is not the first time that Gates has criticized Israel's conduct. In an article in "Bloomberg" in September 2011, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that, at a Security Council Principals Committee meeting, Gates said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 9, 2014
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