Javier Milei’s third trip to Israel since he became President would be nothing more than a diplomatic anecdote if it did not occur in the context of the fervor with which the libertarian leader embraces the offensive of Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally Donald Trump against the Iranian regime. Sticking to this conflict, making it one’s own, saying that Argentina is also “at war”, among other excesses, may serve to ingratiate itself with its international partners, but at the same time it seems like a bad idea for a country that in the past suffered two attacks – that of the Israeli Embassy and that of the AMIA – that local investigators attribute to the government of the ayatollahs. Iran is a dangerous enemy and Milei only provokes it.
And when this fact of reality is mentioned to him, what he answers, in a mystical tone, is that we must take sides “for Good” and “against Evil.” Impossible to seriously discuss geopolitics in those absolute terms.
Before Netanyahu’s visit these days, Iran had already responded harshly to Milei’s declaration of war. In a more than explicit statement, the Tehran regime described the libertarian as an “enemy” and said that it made “a serious miscalculation” by aligning itself with Israel and the United States in the conflict in the Middle East. The text even points directly against the Argentine president and his chancellor Pablo Quirno and accuses them of having become “participants” in the war offensive of their allies.
In this last foray through Israel, while receiving an Honoris Causa doctorate at the University of Bar-Ilan, the libertarian leader raised his voice: “We are not going to be able to coexist with certain cultures, because we defend life and they are going to want to kill us.”
Diplomacy, that art of seeking consensus, has no place in its logic.
