MSNBC's Reid: Israeli Strikes Were to 'Wag the Dog' — Bibi Has 'Obsession with Iran'

On Friday's broadcast of MSNBC's “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid argued that Israel's strike on Iran on Thursday was “wag the doggish” and designed to distract from the war in Gaza and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an “obsession with Iran” although she added that there is a “mutual” obsession between Netanyahu and Iran.

Reid said, “No Israeli leader has been fixated on Iran as long or as consistently as Benjamin Netanyahu. Since his first year in office in 1996, Netanyahu has been sounding the alarm about Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying a nuclear Iran would be catastrophic. In his first speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C., he said time was running out. In the years since, he has threatened to attack Iran if it were to develop nuclear weapons, a threat that is backed by the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons, though they rarely acknowledge that publicly. Netanyahu's obsession with Iran — an obsession that I should note is mutual — takes on fresh resonance during an unprecedented week of direct attacks between the two countries, which have long been engaged in a proxy war. Overnight, Israel carried out a limited strike, firing three air-launched ballistic missiles into Iran, targeting an air base. Israel had vowed it would respond to Iran's retaliatory strike on Saturday when Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel in its first direct military assault on the country. The Iranian strikes were in retaliation for an Israeli strike April 1 on an Iranian consular building in Syria, which killed two of Iran's top generals. But there is another key reason for Netanyahu's singular focus on Iran. It happens to take the attention and the heat off of Gaza.”

She added that the Israeli strike “felt a little wag the doggish to me. These attacks don't seem designed to maybe spark World War III, but it definitely took attention away from Gaza.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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