If there is one thing the always-embattled Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu isn’t, it is a chickensh-t.

Yet that is what “a senior Obama administration official” called Netanyahu in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic correspondent who often receives leaks from the Obama administration.

This galling quote prompted the Daily Caller to list five takaways from incident, including:

It should be noted that “chickenshit” Netanyahu served in the elite Israeli special forces unit Sayeret Matkal. He was even wounded in battle. In contrast, Obama probably once got a paper cut working on the Harvard Law Review.

While claiming to “have Israel’s back,” President Obama has consistently treated our once most loyal ally in the Middle East like dirt. President Obama’s attempts to humiliate the Israeli leader go way back and include snubbing Netanyahu by leaving him to twiddle his thumbs in the White House as Obama went to the family quarters for dinner.

A slap in the face of that magnitude required real animus.  But the “chickensh-t” utterance is likely to have real world fallout, as an article in The American Interest magazine notes.

The senior official didn't just call Netanyahu names but insisted that Bibi has no cards to play because Israel waited too long and now won’t be able to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities (it should be added that, if this is true, it may possibly have been because Israel deferred to the wishes of the Obama administration). The American Interest writes:

If the Goldberg interview leads other nations to make this judgment, the effects on the world will be profound:

If the threat of Israeli military action is really off the table (and we should remember that this wouldn’t be the first time a U.S. administration misjudged Israeli intentions), then it’s very unlikely that a strong international coalition in favor of tough sanctions against Iran can long survive. Many of the European countries that have supported sanctions on Iran have been trying to deter Israeli military action as much as to influence Iran’s behavior. If Israel has missed its chance for military action, or is perceived to lack the will to take it, then as that perception spreads we will have to expect significant changes in the politics of the region and in the attitudes of the Europeans.

Israel may be at a critical turning point not only in its relations with the United States but in the way its power is perceived in Europe and in its home region.

Commentary, as might be expected, had choice words on the chickensh-it fiasco. I think Commentary is onto what's behind it:

The real reason to target Netanyahu is that it is easier to scapegoat the Israelis than to own up to the administration’s mistakes. Rather than usher in a new era of good feelings with the Arab world in keeping with his 2009 Cairo speech, Obama has been the author of policies that have left an already messy Middle East far more dangerous.

We can’t blame President Obama for the rise of anti-Semitism, which is always latent, but we can blame him for not taking a more vocal stand against it.

Because of his ideological bias and lack of character, we can truly say of Barack Obama that, when his term ends, he will leave the world a worse place than when he found it.