The reminder was timely: This man is no softie. He’s a politician tough enough to watch his rivals auto-destruct on his cool, and principled enough to set the right long-term objectives, including “comprehensive diplomatic contacts and dialogue” with Iran, as he said in his second Nowruz, or New Year, greeting to Iranians.
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It fell to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to play the role Khrushchev once played in toughening a young American president.
The former Soviet leader thought he could browbeat Kennedy only to discover, in Vienna, that the Kennedy charm was not unalloyed to steel (“It will be a long, cold winter.”) Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to think he could steamroll Obama. He earned a frosty comeuppance.
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