Having accused the ‘Jewish lobby’ of hijacking American foreign policy to serve the cause of Israel and in particular of pushing America into the Iraq war, John Mearsheimer (of Mearsheimer and Walt infamy) has now descended into incoherence by contradicting this central claim of their whole rotten thesis. As CAMERA reports:

But in an interview on NPR’s On Point program, hosted by Tom Ashbrook, Mearsheimer lets the truth slip out – early on the administration itself was determined to go to war against Saddam, and once the Israelis understood the die was cast, they decided not to contradict their most important ally. After admitting this, Mearsheimer suddenly remembers that for more than a year he has been making exactly the opposite case, and so he immediately tries to backtrack, but there is no doubt about what he said. Here is the segment (click here to listen):

Ashbrook: The argument’s been made that Iran is Israel’s greater fear, so if the Israel Lobby were so powerful, why would the US have gone into Iraq? That’s not the number one Israeli concern. Is there a contradiction then John, in you having described Iraq as the result of Israeli lobby influence?

Mearsheimer: No, Tom. It’s quite clear that in early 2002 – now remember we went into Iraq in March 2003. In early 2002 when the Israelis caught wind of the fact that we were seriously thinking about doing Iraq, that they came to Washington and told us that they would prefer that we do Iran first. The Israelis very clearly thought that Iran was a greater threat than Iraq. It’s not that they were uninterested in having us effect regime change in Iraq and Syria, it’s just that they preferred Iran. But once they came to understand that Iraq would be the first operation, and we would subsequently deal with Iran and Syria, they embraced the idea of attacking Iraq, although they continually reminded us that we had to do Iran and Syria afterwards.

So what you see from early 2002 up until the war starts in March 2003 is that the Israelis are pushing us very hard, harder than other country outside the United States, to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

That last sentence, of course, makes no sense whatever given what he has just said.

The fact is that from the start Israel was indeed telling the US that it thought Iraq wasn’t the priority because the far greater danger was presented by Iran. This has not stopped the worldwide industry of Israel-bashers from promoting a gross misrepresentation of Israel’s position on the Iraq war as a platform for their odious anti-Jewish libel of a global Jewish conspiracy. In Mearsheimer’s revealing gaffe, he is caught in flagrante by inadvertently blurting out the truth.

How careless of him.