The White House is now calling Netanyahu a serious threat to an agreement with Iran:
WSJ – 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.
This just after John Kerry publicly said yesterday that Netanyahu didn’t know what he was talking about with respect to the Iranian agreement, even criticizing him on supporting the war in Iraq, clearly trying to suggest that Netanyahu has bad judgment:
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.
Here’s the video of that exchange:
As an aside, Brit Hume defended Netanyahu and pointed out something that Kerry left out in his comments:
Netanyahu may have strongly backed Iraq war, but he held no office then & had no vote. John Kerry had both. He voted aye.
— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 26, 2015
And to top it all off, Susan Rice came out yesterday and publicly criticized Netanyahu’s coming speech on Iran to Congress as ‘destructive’ to the very fabric of the relationship between the US and Israel:
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.
This administration is absolutely out of control. They are putting an agreement allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons over their relationship with Israel, our closest and strongest ally in the Middle East. It’s almost unbelievable.
Netanyahu in turn has ramped up his criticism, saying the U.S., among other countries, has given up its commitment on keeping Iran from getting nukes:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up his criticism of the developing nuclear deal with Iran, and accused the six world powers – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – of “giving up on their commitment” to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“The powers pledged to prevent Iran [from obtaining] a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said a Likud political convention in Maale Adumim. “From the developing agreement it seems they have given up on that commitment, and have accepted the fact that Iran, gradually over several years, will develop the capabilities to make fissile material for many nuclear bombs. Maybe they can live with it, but I can’t.”
None of us should be able to live with it.
I never thought I’d see the day when an American president would be so anti-Israel that he would allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, knowing full well Israel is the main target of this Iranian regime. It’s almost like Obama is a Muslim or something.