When President Obama sits down face-to-face with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week to discuss Iran, he will be staring down the greatest challenge on Israel he’s faced during his presidency.
It is the first time Obama has met Netanyahu since last spring, when the Israeli leader appeared to lecture the president on his country’s history in front of cameras at the White House.
Whatever tensions exist could be exacerbated by the looming crisis that provides a backdrop for the election-year meeting.
Israel believes time is running out for a military strike against Iran that would prevent the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons, something Israel sees as an existential threat.
Administration officials acknowledge the Iranian nuclear issue is coming to a head, but U.S. officials have cautioned Israel against a strike that would threaten stability in the Middle East and the global economy.
It’s possible the Obama-Netanyahu meeting next week could determine both countries’ course of actions for Iran.
“The relationship between and Obama and Netanyahu is going to be tested like never before,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It doesn’t have to happen on March 5… but if they don’t see eye-to-eye, the prospect of Israel going off on its own dramatically increases.”
Iran has been defiant in the face of economic sanctions, threatening a pre-emptive strike against countries that would attack, moving uranium operations underground and not allowing nuclear inspectors access to a military site.
Both Israel and the United States have said they want stiff economic sanctions imposed on Iran to convince the country not to pursue nuclear weapons.
But the two countries view the threat of a nuclear Iran differently, and Israel has less capability than the United States militarily, analysts say, giving the Israelis a shorter potential window to intervene.
“Israel sees this as a very stabilizing significant event, and Israel also lacks the capacity to be able to deal with it in an effective way with diplomacy or economic measures,” Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, told The Hill.
“The United States sees it as part of a broader counter-proliferation strategy. Certainly it’s well aware of regional risks imposed by Iran… It also has other tools for dealing with it. So, some differences in perspective are inevitable.”
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2 Responses
I guess Natanyahu will be schooling Obama on March 5th about Iran.
Laiv Malochim b’yad HaSh-m.
The meeting will be resolved in 5 minutes flat. To Obama’s chagrin, the whole world has come to recognize a nuclear Iran as a threat-even the Arab world. It wouldn’t take much for Iran to smuggle in several dozen suitcase sized nuclear bombs into the u.s. Netanyahu will impress upon Obama that if he cooperates with Israel, and they are successful in neutralizing Iran, Obama will be hailed a hero. He will make a speech in which the most oft repeated word will be “I”. The Usama Bin Laden boost will pale in comparison. If it is G-d forbid not successful, he will wash his hands from it and place the blame squarely on Israel. It is a no brainer win-win situation. If, however, he fails to act, he will be blamed and will go down in history for allowing the resulting catastrophe to have developed under his watch. His ego would never allow that.