Barack Obama collects hard
favors from allies and repays them with neglect and derision
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| Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu with Rep. John Boehner in 2012. |
Even friends of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are
second-guessing his decision to accept House Speaker John Boehner ’s
invitation to address Congress next month on the subject of Iran, over loud
objections from the Obama administration. The prospect of the speech, those
friends say, has sparked a needless crisis between Jerusalem and Washington.
And it has put Democrats to an invidious choice between their loyalty to the
president and their support for the Jewish state, jeopardizing the bipartisan
basis of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Sensible
concerns—except for a few things. Relations between Israel and the U.S. have
been in crisis nearly from the moment President Obama stepped into office.
Democratic support for Israel has been eroding for decades. It was the U.S.
president, not the Israeli prime minister, who picked this fight.
Oh, and if there’s
going to be a blowout in U.S.-Israel relations, is now really a worse time than
later this year, when the Obama administration will have further cornered
Israel with its Iran diplomacy?
Because memories are
short, let’s remind ourselves of the Ur-moment in the Bibi-Barack drama. It
happened on May 18, 2009, when Mr. Netanyahu, in office for just a few weeks,
arrived to a White House that was demanding that he endorse Palestinian
statehood and freeze settlements, even as the administration was rebuffing
Israeli requests to set a deadline for the nascent nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
The result: Within a month of that meeting, Mr. Netanyahu duly
endorsed Palestinian statehood in a speech at Israel’s right-wing Bar-Ilan
University—roughly the equivalent of Mr. Obama going to a meeting of the Sierra
Club and urging its members to get over their opposition to fracking. By the
end of the year, Mr. Netanyahu further infuriated his right-wing base by agreeing
to a 10-month settlement freeze, which even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged
was “unprecedented.”
What did Mr. Netanyahu get in return from Mr. Obama? While the
president stuck to his refusal to set “an artificial deadline,” he did concede in a joint press conference that “we’re not going
to have talks forever. We’re not going to create a situation in which talks
become an excuse for inaction while Iran proceeds with developing a nuclear—and
deploying a nuclear weapon.”
The promise not to “have
talks forever” was made six years ago. Since then, diplomatic efforts have
included the 2009 “fuel swap” proposal; the 2010 Brazil-Turkey-Iran
declaration; the 2011 Russian “step-by-step proposal”; the 2012 diplomatic
rounds in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow; and finally the 2013 “Joint Plan of
Action,” a six-month interim deal that is now in its 13th month.
Now Mr. Obama is vowing to veto the bipartisan Kirk-Menendez
bill that would end the charade by imposing sanctions on Iran in the event
Tehran doesn’t sign an acceptable nuclear deal by the summer—that is, after the
third deadline for the interim agreement has expired. The president is also
demanding that Democrats rally around him in his histrionic fit over the
Netanyahu speech. This is from the same administration that, as Politico’s
David Rogers reminds us, never bothered to consult Mr. Boehner on its
invitation to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to address Congress in 2011.
This history is worth
recalling because it underscores the unpleasant truth about America in the age
of Obama. The president collects hard favors from allies and repays them with
neglect and derision. He is eager to accommodate the political needs of
authoritarian leaders like Iran’s Hasan Rouhani but has no use for the
political needs of elected leaders like Mr. Netanyahu. He believes that it is
for other statesmen to stake their political lives and risk their national
future for the sake of a moral principle—at least as Mr. Obama defines that
principle. As for him, the only thing sacred is his own political convenience.
This is the mentality
of a peevish and callow potentate. Not the least of the reasons Mr. Netanyahu
must not give in to pressure to cancel his speech is that he could expect to
get nothing out of it from the administration, while humiliating Mr. Boehner in
the bargain.
Mr. Netanyahu also
needs to speak because Congress deserves an unvarnished account of the choice
to which Mr. Obama proposes to put Israel: either accede to continued diplomacy
with Iran, and therefore its de facto nuclearization; or strike Iran militarily
in defiance of the U.S. and Mr. Obama’s concordat with Tehran. A congressional
vote in favor of Kirk-Menendez would at least make good on Mr. Obama’s unmet
promise not to use talks as “an excuse for inaction.”
Above all, Mr.
Netanyahu needs to speak because Israel cannot expect indefinite support from
the U.S. if it acts like a fretful and obedient client to a cavalier American
patron. The margin of Israel’s security is measured not by anyone’s love but by
the respect of friends and enemies alike. By giving this speech, Mr. Netanyahu
is demanding that respect. Irritating the president is a small price to pay for
doing so.
