U.S., Israel Trade Barbs Over Iran Talks By Carol E. Lee , Michael R. Crittenden , Nicholas Casey
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-israel-trade-barbs-over-iran-talks-1424893835
Top U.S. officials sharpened efforts to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of his visit to Washington next week as tensions rose over his push to scuttle a possible nuclear deal with Iran.
At what U.S. officials say is a historic low point in relations between the longtime allies, the White House now sees Mr. Netanyahu as a serious threat to President Barack Obama ’s efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program.
U.S. officials are deliberately moving to undercut the Israeli leader’s influence ahead of his controversial speech to Congress next week by casting him as opposing any deal with Iran regardless of the terms.
Secretary of State John Kerry amplified administration criticism during congressional testimony Wednesday, questioning the Israeli leader’s judgment by saying he may be wrong about the Iran talks, just as Mr. Kerry said Mr. Netanyahu was wrong in his support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The top U.S. diplomat presented the administration’s new view that Mr. Netanyahu would be against any nuclear deal with Iran, no matter how stringent.
“He may have a judgment that just may not be correct here,” Mr. Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Members of Mr. Netanyahu’s inner circle described the prime minister as caught between the objectives—now in contradiction, they say—of maintaining good relations with the White House and protecting Israel from an Iranian threat. In the end, they said, while damage control might later be necessary, Iran took priority.
“The superpowers committed to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but from the agreement that’s being formulated, it appears that they have given up on this commitment,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Wednesday outside Jerusalem.
Tensions between Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu have simmered for years, stemming from disagreements over regional policies. But they boiled over this week into an openly public exchange of hostilities that Obama administration officials don’t anticipate ending, even after Israeli elections next month.
Mr. Kerry’s comments followed remarks Tuesday by Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice , castigating Mr. Netanyahu for going around the White House and accepting an invitation from House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. The move, she said, undermined the longtime tradition of bipartisanship in U.S.-Israel relations.
“I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship,” Ms. Rice said in a televised interview with Charlie Rose.
A Netanyahu spokesman declined to comment on Ms. Rice’s remarks, but the prime minister on Wednesday pressed ahead his plans to visit Washington to argue against an emerging nuclear deal with Iran. The prime minister is gambling that Congress—not the White House—is the best place to leverage his sway on U.S. policy on Iran.
“Sometimes in the life of a nation you have to make hard choices,” said Dore Gold, who has served as an adviser to the prime minister on international affairs. “This is a very tense moment. But Iran is not some agreement about a [West Bank] settlement. This is a life-or-death question for Israel.”
Mr. Gold compared Mr. Netanyahu’s predicament with one faced by another Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, who defied a warning from Lyndon Johnson not to launch pre-emptive strikes against an Arab military buildup in 1967, the start of what is known to Israelis as the Six Day War.
Michael Oren, a former ambassador to the U.S. under Mr. Netanyahu, said the spat between Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu was allowing once unshakable U.S.-Israeli ties to become “political football,” not just in Israel’s upcoming election, but potentially for the American presidential campaigns in 2016.
“It just keeps getting worse and worse every day, it’s spinning out of control,” said Mr. Oren, who is now running against Mr. Netanyahu’s party in upcoming elections. “This has a nasty edge to it—a seriously nasty edge. And it’s deeply personal now.”
Mr. Netanyahu sees the threat of a nuclear Iran as the biggest danger to Israel and says the only acceptable deal would strip Tehran of any domestic nuclear program.
The Obama administration, in coordination with five other world powers, wants to reach an international agreement that allows Iran to retain some nuclear energy capability while putting weapons further out of Tehran’s reach. Iranian officials deny they have sought to build nuclear weapons.
The White House says Mr. Netanyahu’s position allows no room to strike a deal, in part because other world powers involved in the talks, let alone Iran, wouldn’t back an agreement that completely dismantles Iran’s nuclear program.
“What he’s demonstrating now is there’s no nuclear deal he would support,” a senior administration official said. “And that’s clarifying in some fashion because he’s not even making the case that he made last year that more sanctions can help get a better deal.”
White House officials say the current strain in U.S.-Israeli ties is unlike any other in the past. Previously when relations have frayed, officials note, it has mainly been over the issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace, not such a high-stakes global security issue that has impact in Israel and around the world.
Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu have had a frosty relationship for years. They sparred over the issue of housing settlements and Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed last year. And Mr. Obama resented what he saw as an insulting, public lecture from Mr. Netanyahu on Israeli history after their Oval Office meeting in 2011.
Mr. Netanyahu, in turn, feels Mr. Obama has spent too much of his presidency trying to patch up U.S. relations with the Muslim world at the expense of its ties to Israel.
Many political observers in Israel see the coming election as playing a role in Mr. Netanyahu’s Washington visit, something he and his advisers deny.
Analysts say Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-charging defiance of the Obama administration plays favorably among right-wing voters who support Likud.
Challengers like Naftali Bennett have tried to woo hard-line voters from the prime minister, arguing that he is weak on security and won’t stand up to the U.S. in its complaints about settlement expansion.
This puts Mr. Netanyahu, who has focused much of his career on stopping the Iranian nuclear program, in a difficult bind so close to the election, said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli-American pollster. Even though he might have miscalculated in assessing the resistance within the administration to the speech to Congress, backing down at this point could harm his reputation and his performance on election day to his core constituency, said Mr. Barak. “He’s staking the election on the security issue,” Mr. Barak said.
The strategy could backfire and even threaten security ties with the U.S., some analysts warn. In the past, Israeli officials have lauded the White House for boosting military support, subsidizing interceptor systems used against Hamas rockets in Gaza and supporting Arrow System, a program to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles.
The political rift is worrying Israeli defense chiefs, said one former Israeli general familiar with their thinking. During the summer’s conflict in Gaza, the U.S. delayed approving an Israeli request for a shipment of hellfire missiles, something defense chiefs still remember, the general said. Some worry that the chill between political leaderships could prompt future disagreements with the U.S. over how to supply Israel, said the ex-general.
“If the tensions persist and increase, you hear real concern in the defense establishment that over time it could impact the level and depth of the strategic cooperation,’’ he said.
The disagreement is causing broader rifts in U.S-Israel relations. More Democratic lawmakers have said they don’t plan to attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), who had asked Mr. Boehner to delay the speech, said Wednesday he wouldn’t attend because it was “highly inappropriate” so close to upcoming elections in Israel. “Otherwise it’s being spun as if we’re trying to affect the election of another country, and we should never do that. The halls of Congress should not be used for that,” Mr. Kaine said.
Mr. Netanyahu on Tuesday rejected an invitation from Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, to meet privately with Senate Democrats while he is in Washington.
Mr. Netanyahu’s new, Congress-first approach to relations with the U.S. is a mistake, the senior Obama administration official said.
“Congress has a significant role to play but Congress doesn’t manage our day to day foreign policy, whether it’s our Iran negotiations, our efforts on Israel’s behalf around the world, our security cooperation,” the official said. “I mean, Congress isn’t negotiating the Iran agreement, for instance.”
Other Democrats, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, played down heightened tensions. Mr. Schumer said he planned to attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech as a demonstration of how strong the ties between the two countries remain.
Write to Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com, Michael R. Crittenden at michael.crittenden@wsj.com and Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com
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