Bolton: Obama Pushed Iran Deal to Prevent Israeli Airstrike

         The Obama administration feared an Israeli airstrike on Iran more than it feared Iran building a nuclear weapon, and that's why it pushed for a deal to reduce sanctions against Iran, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton writes in The Weekly Standard.
"Buying time for its own sake makes sense in some negotiating contexts, but the sub silentio objective here was to jerry-rig yet another argument to wield against Israel and its fateful decision whether or not to strike Iran," Bolton writes. "Obama, fearing that strike more than an Iranian nuclear weapon, clearly needed greater international pressure on Jerusalem."

Israel knows it was the target of the Geneva negotiations that produced the deal early Sunday morning in Europe, he said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deal a "historic mistake."  [related story]

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