• pub­lished: 22 Jan 2015
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Pres­i­dent Barack Obama won't meet Is­rael's lead­er when he vis­its Wash­ing­ton in March, the White House said on Thurs­day, in the wake of being wal­loped by the Re­pub­li­cans' wel­come to Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu to ad­dress the U.s. Congress on Iran. Bernadette Mee­han, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the White House Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, said Obama was with­hold­ing a wel­come for Oval Of­fice chats with Ne­tanyahu in light of Is­rael's March 17 de­ci­sions. "As an issue of long-stand­ing prac­tice and stan­dard, we don't see heads of state or com­peti­tors in close close­ness to their races, in order to keep away from the pres­ence of af­fect­ing an eq­ui­table race in a re­mote na­tion," Mee­han said in ex­pla­na­tion. "In like man­ner, the pres­i­dent won't be meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Ne­tanyahu due to the near­ness to the Is­raeli de­ci­sion, which is only two weeks after his ar­ranged lo­ca­tion to the U.s. Congress." Prior on Thurs­day, Ne­tanyahu de­clared that he would ad­dress Congress in March. The choice by Obama, whose as­so­ci­a­tion with Ne­tanyahu has fre­quent­ly been strained, may be trans­lat­ed as a scorn in light of the fact that pi­o­neers from Is­rael, a staunch U.s. as­so­ci­ate, are quite often man­aged chats with the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent on out­ings to Wash­ing­ton. Ne­tanyahu has blamed Obama for mak­ing an ex­cess of con­ces­sions to Iran for ex­ces­sive­ly min­i­mal as an ex­change in atom­ic talks in the mid­dle of Tehran and world forces, and his visit could set up a dis­cre­tionary con­fronta­tion on an issue has that has iso­lat­ed Obama and con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­li­cans. The White House de­clined to say if Ne­tanyahu had looked for a gath­er­ing with Obama, how­ev­er an Is­raeli of­fi­cial, talk­ing on state of name­less­ness, said on Wednes­day the Is­raeli head ad­min­is­tra­tor was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the like­li­hood of con­vers­es with the pres­i­dent amid the visit. State De­part­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jen Psaki told a news prepa­ra­tion that U.s. Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry ad­di­tion­al­ly would not be meet­ing with Ne­tanyahu amid the visit, refer­ing to the forth­com­ing Is­raeli de­ci­sions. The White House said on Wednes­day the wel­come to Ne­tanyahu, is­sued by Obama's Re­pub­li­can con­gres­sion­al ri­vals with­out coun­sel­ing him, was a break of con­cil­ia­to­ry con­ven­tion. U.s. Sen­ate Demo­crat­ic pi­o­neer Harry Reid said on Thurs­day that Re­pub­li­can con­gres­sion­al pi­o­neers had not coun­seled him on wel­com­ing Ne­tanyahu to ad­dress a joint ses­sion of Congress, how­ev­er he said he would wel­come the dis­course. U.s. Place of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Speak­er John Boehn­er re­port­ed the wel­come to Ne­tanyahu on Wednes­day, a day after Obama vowed in his State of the Union lo­ca­tion to veto new Iran sanc­tions en­act­ment being pro­duced in Congress. "The pres­i­dent has been clear about his re­stric­tion to Congress pass­ing new en­act­ment on Iran that could un­der­mine our trans­ac­tions and par­ti­tion the world­wide group," Mee­han said on Thurs­day. She said Obama and Ne­tanyahu had talked reg­u­lar­ly on Iran and would stay in con­tact on the issue. With­out fur­ther ado be­fore Ne­tanyahu's for­mal ac­knowl­edge­ment of the wel­come, Is­rael's Mossad sagac­i­ty boss open­ly moved in with the con­ser­va­tive ex­ec­u­tive, deny­ing in an un­com­mon press ex­pla­na­tion re­ports that he re­strict­ed fur­ther au­tho­rizes on Iran while world forces ar­range with the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic on break­ing points to its ques­tioned atom­ic sys­tem. In his an­nounce­ment, Ne­tanyahu said he was "re­spect­ed to ac­knowl­edge the wel­come" and that he would uti­lize the dis­course "to thank Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, Congress and the Amer­i­can in­di­vid­u­als for their back­ing of Is­rael". On his Twit­ter page, Boehn­er said the Con­gres­sion­al lo­ca­tion was planned for March 3, two weeks prior to Is­rael's gen­er­al de­ci­sion in which Ne­tanyahu is vying for a fourth term. Ne­tanyahu's of­fice said the Is­raeli pi­o­neer would like­wise go to the March 1 to 3 year­ly ar­range­ment gath­er­ing in Wash­ing­ton of the no­tice­able star Is­rael AIPAC hall. Is­raeli po­lit­i­cal re­porters de­pict­ed Boehn­er's wel­come as ei­ther a Re­pub­li­can en­deav­or to give Ne­tanyahu a sup­port in the de­ci­sion bat­tle or an Is­raeli offer to in­trude in U.s. leg­isla­tive is­sues, or both. A few ex­am­in­ers said, nonethe­less, that a third Ne­tanyahu lo­ca­tion to Congress would have lit­tle ef­fect on Is­raelis since quite a while ago ac­cli­mat­ed to his rhetoric abil­i­ties in En­glish on the uni­ver­sal stage. His pri­ma­ry chal­lenger in what sur­veys show is a neck-and-neck race, Labor Party boss Isaac Her­zog, ad­vised against fur­ther strain­ing Ne­tanyahu's re­la­tions with Obama. "We re­quire the pres­i­dent on our side, day and night, on such a large num­ber of del­i­cate and es­sen­tial is­sues," Her­zog said.