It’s the Iran thing: Obama and Israel continue to drift apart

In a closed door meeting with the Senate Banking Committee last Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden, and officials from the State and Treasury departments provided a briefing on the talks to halt the Iranian nuclear program and to urge the committee to back away from any discussion of new sanctions.

After the meeting, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Il) angrily compared the administration’s appeal to Neville Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of Nazi Germany before World War II. “I do think we ought to accelerate sanctions,” said Kirk. “The pitch was very unconvincing. It was fairly anti-Israeli.”

A Senate aide told BuzzFeed that during the meeting, “every time anybody would say anything about ‘what would the Israelis say,’ they’d get cut off and Kerry would say, ‘You have to ignore what they’re telling you, stop listening to the Israelis on this.’ “They had no details,” the aide said. “They had no ability to verify anything, to describe anything, to answer basic questions.”

“I was stunned that in a classified setting, when you’re trying to talk with the very folks that would be originating legislation relative to sanctions, there would be such a lack of specificity,” complained Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a Banking panel member who is also the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

“It’s a bad deal — an exceedingly bad deal,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Candy Crowley on CNN’s State of the Union program this Sunday, in an interview which seemed to be an attempt by Bibi to talk directly to the American people. White House spokesman Jay Carney countered on Monday that negotiations offer a diplomatic solution, telling reporters that “rejecting negotiations means choosing” the use of force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

In a sign of the expanding disconnect between the U.S. and Israel, the two countries could not agree when Kerry would next visit the Jewish State. Israel announced that Kerry would be in Jerusalem this Friday, but the State Department announced he would not travel to discuss the Iran deal until after Thanksgiving.

It is being falsely reported that the only objections to the deal as presently structured comes from Israel; most of the Sunni Muslim world objects to any partial deal which would not reduce the Iranian ability to enrich uranium, especially Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as leader of the Sunni world (Iran sees itself as leader of the Shia Muslim world).

Not trusting the Obama administration, Israel is seeking allies elsewhere.

The Sunday Times of London reports that the Mossad is working with Saudi officials on a plan for an attack on Iran just in case the current talks do not curb its nuclear program.

According to this report, as part of this growing cooperation, the Saudi’s have already given the go-ahead for Israeli planes to use its airspace in the event of an attack on Iran.

“Once the Geneva agreement is signed, the military option will be back on the table. The Saudis are furious and are willing to give Israel all the help it needs,” a diplomatic source told The Times.

Additionally, there are reports that Saudi Arabia has agreed to support any Israeli raid with helicopters and drones.

Israel is also trying to strengthen its alliance with France, whose objections scuttled the deal two weeks ago. French President Francois Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent, who branded the deal originally offered to Iran a “sucker’s deal,” went to Israel over the weekend to discuss alternatives.

France is considered a hard-liner in the talks with Iran, but don’t be surprised if they back down. At the end of the Second Lebanon War, France was a hard-liner in insisting that Hezbollah be disarmed but they eventually backed down.

In the short run, there’s probably no way to bridge the divide between Jerusalem and Washington unless Iran turns down the “sucker’s deal” the U.S. is offering. The administration has flatly rejected Netanyahu’s objections and has instructed Congress “not to listen” to Israel.

The Jewish State realizes that in the end, the U.S. will enter into an agreement with or without its consent. The way things now stand, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are likely to do just that.

In the long run, America and Israel will remain close allies, only perhaps not as close as they were before January of 2008 and after January of 2016.