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.
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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