Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ramping up the pressure on President Barack Obama to prioritize the buildup of Iran's nuclear program is a crude public signal to alert Israeli supporters in the US Congress to echo his demand for the US president to put Iran's nuclear program ahead of other crises in the Middle East. As if the signal were not enough, Netanyahu insisted Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the White House must demonstrate by “action” to the newly elected Iranian president that the “military option which is on the table is truly on the table.” Is this an advice, an instruction, or an order!

Netanyahu said the strategy of Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani is to be “a wolf in sheep's clothing”; this was a clear and crude attempt to stifle the need for a US assessment of the new president of Iran, as is customary.

After complaints were made about the US revealing Israel's raid on a shipment of Russian-made missiles in the Syrian city of Latakia last week, a few Israelis such as the former Israeli ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, softened the obvious crudeness of Israel's reaction by telling The New York Times: “Let's say that Israel would rather this would not have been leaked out of Washington.” He added, “So be it, these squeaks are part of the relationship.”

One wonders what Netanyahu seeks by these July 14 public statements, coming on the eve of Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to the region. Perhaps it's time for the White House to discover “the squeaks” in the “special” US-Israeli relations!