President Barack Obama is a smooth salesman but it’s been tough going to persuade the Israeli premier to go along with the P5+1 nuclear deal that has severely strained US-Israeli relations. Bullying didn’t work, so now he appears to have resorted to sweetening the pill in other areas.

A headline in Haaretz “Washington, Jerusalem discussing massive compensation for Iranian nuclear deal” says it all, although both parties were quick to deny this bounty had any relation to Iran.

Call it a quid pro quo, a bribe or what you will, the fact is that the White House has signed-off on a $1.9 billion arms package set to bolster Israel’s military might with precision-guided munitions, Hellfire missiles and super-penetrator bunker busters, which the US asserts will not alter the regional balance of power.

It wasn’t long before a somewhat mollified Netanyahu received another gift, courtesy of the Obama administration. And what a magnificent present that was! Four weeks of negotiations, involving 162 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory states, produced a blueprint for a Middle East nuclear-free zone to be discussed at a UN conference in or before March next year.

The final document was agreed-upon by all participating countries except for the usual Israel-First states — the US, Britain and Canada.

In short, this important review designed to make the area safer is dead in the water and will remain so until the next round of talks are scheduled in 2020.

In truth, the conference was a no-go from the start because Israel — the only Middle East state that actually has a nuclear weapons arsenal, as far as we are aware — is not a member of the NPT and maintains what it calls a policy of “nuclear ambivalence”. As long as Israel is unwilling to come clean in an official manner, it can hardly agree to divest itself of nukes, which it doesn’t admit to having in the first place.

It goes without saying that Netanyahu was both relieved and gratified. He told Secretary of State John Kerry that he very much appreciated the US stance. According to an unnamed official quoted in the Guardian, the Israeli PM said: “The United States kept its commitment to Israel by preventing a Middle East resolution that would single out Israel and ignore its security interests and the threats posed to it by an increasingly turbulent Middle East.”

Obama’s earlier threat to deprive Israel of US diplomatic support in the United Nations turned out to be hot air, especially when a mere conference giving the international community and regional actors an opportunity to air their views in public, could hardly be construed as a threat to the Jewish State. And particularly, when its nuclear status was exposed by an Israeli former nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, in 1986 and confirmed by Shimon Peres in 1988 with the words, Israel “built a nuclear option, not in order to have a Hiroshima but an Oslo.”

Russia has a very different take on the collapsed initiative. The head of the Russian delegation expressed his country’s disappointment at “the objections of three states” while stressing Moscow’s gratitude “to Egypt for the warm words to us…in creating an area free of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.” Cairo reacted with the warning, “This will have consequences in front of the Arab world and public opinion.”

Once again, America’s double standards and promotion of Israeli exceptionalism are glaring, especially at a moment in time when the Obama administration is going all out to rein-in Iran from developing nuclear weapons with a store house of carrots set to enrich Tehran to the tune of $150 billion when sanctions are lifted.

America’s blocking the way of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, screams loud and clear is that the door is opened wide to a regional nuclear arms race. On the grounds ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, there is no moral argument to deter Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Turkey from following suit.

Ultimately, a disgruntled Israel got a more valuable peace offering than did Gulf states that walked away from the recent Camp David meet with little more than promises, promises— and a weapons bonanza — designed to ensure Israel still maintains its military qualitative edge — that has US arms manufactures laughing all the way to the bank.