Warsaw: Just before a US-sponsored conference that was supposed to be about Iran but isn't, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu changed the subject back again. At the conference in Warsaw, he said, Israel would be meeting in public with Arab foreign ministers "to advance the common interest of war with Iran," according to a tweet from his office.

Yikes. Twitter pounced. Headlines blared. The Prime Minister's office swiftly erased the tweet and claimed there was a translation error. A new tweet changed "war with Iran" to "combating Iran."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Warsaw on Thursday. Credit:AP

It's tempting to think of this as a blunder. A better way to see Netanyahu's tweet is as a so-called Kinsley gaffe, named for the editor Michael Kinsley: when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

In other words, Netanyahu was right the first time. Israel and America's Arab allies are indeed at war with Iran. And despite efforts this week to entice war-weary European allies to join the effort, for Arab and Israeli delegations the conference was a chance to further coordinate their campaign against Iran.