From the outset, it was difficult to understand the confrontation between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu over the latter’s accepting, without prior consultation with the White House, an invitation from House Speaker John Boehner to speak to Congress on the Iranian nuclear crisis.
After all, contrary to an early inaccurate report, later corrected, from The New York Times, Mr. Netanyahu accepted the invitation only after the administration had been informed of it. And Mr. Netanyahu had to know the negative fallout would be intense, not only because he was vulnerable to the charge of having publicly disrespected the president but also, given the sharp disagreement he and House Republicans have had with the president on the issue, he could also easily be portrayed as seeking to undermine the president’s policy on Iran, even as negotiations were being pursued.
Last week we cautioned that the always tense relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu should not be allowed to obscure the real issue here – namely, what kind of deal would emerge from the talks.
Developments since then have only served to underscore that warning while shedding some light on Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address Congress even at the risk of further alienating the president.
Israeli Army Radio reported on Tuesday that Israeli officials had been told in recent days that the United States and Iran were closing in on an agreement that would lift the current economic sanctions regime and require certain monitoring mechanisms. But it would also permit Iran to retain a significantly large number of centrifuges – close to the number Iran insisted it had to keep and nowhere near what the U.S. had originally sought. Iran will also obligate itself to rein in terrorism and unrest in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
For a president bent on burnishing his legacy, the purported agreement raises the possibility that the Middle East will be considerably quieter than it is now (except perhaps on the Israeli-Palestinian front) during his final two years in office, even if the lull will eventually prove illusory, since even Mr. Obama cannot really believe Iran will honor its commitments.
It is also noteworthy that several days ago the Obama administration hotly denied an Israeli television report that the U.S. had agreed to 80 percent of Iran’s demands, characterizing it as “complete nonsense.”
Yet the apparent level of U.S. concessions strongly points in the opposite direction, and would certainly explain why the White House would kick up such a fuss about an Israeli prime minister going before Congress and challenging, by implication, the president and his negotiating positions.
It also explains why Mr. Netanyahu was willing to risk a serious break with the president and why he would consider that risk not only warranted, but an Israeli national security imperative.
Last November, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama secretly wrote to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, purportedly – “according to people briefed on the correspondence” – linking Iran’s cooperation in fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria with a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s future nuclear program.
When questioned about this, Secretary of State John Kerry refused to confirm or deny the existence of the letter though he insisted that “No conversation, no agreement, no exchange, nothing has created any deal or agreement with respect to any of the events that are at stake in the Middle East…. There is no linkage whatsoever of the nuclear discussions with any other issue. And I want to make that absolutely clear. The nuclear negotiations are on heir own. They’re standing separate from anything else. And no discussion has ever taken place bout linking one thing to another.”
Be that as it may, Iran has somehow gone from a supplicant seeking to end crippling economic sanctions and forestall possible military action to a full negotiating partner able to extract concessions from the U.S.
Plainly, the Iranians have something President Obama desperately wants, apparently even at the expense of permitting Iran to eventually emerge as a nuclear military power.
So what is in play here is a clash between Benjamin Netanyahu’s concern for Israel’s future and Barack Obama’s quest for a legacy of peace, even one of fleeting duration.
We hope Mr. Netanyahu succeeds in rousing Congress, which is, after all, a co-equal branch of government with the presidency. This is hardly a time for Israeli sacrifices on the altar of Mr. Obama’s vainglory.