Israel's prime minister addresses the US Congress today in an increasingly heated battle with the White House over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, as negotiations resume in Switzerland.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attacked repeatedly the emerging Iran deal and is reportedly planning to unveil details to US lawmakers to show why he believes it poses a grave danger to Israel.
But US President Barack Obama lashed out at his nemesis, pointing to the premier's past assaults on an interim deal reached in 2013 under which Iran has already halted much of its uranium enrichment program.
"Netanyahu made all sorts of claims," he told Reuters on Monday.
"This was going to be a terrible deal," he went on. "This was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief. Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true."
In a twist of fate, Netanyahu will be speaking as US and Iranian negotiators hammer out the deal behind closed doors in a lakeside hotel in Montreux as a March 31 deadline looms.
Thousands of miles from the political storm unfolding in Washington, top US diplomat John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif got back to talks early Tuesday after two brief negotiating sessions on Monday.
And State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf warned Netanyahu against revealing details shared in confidence in classified briefings with the Israelis.
"Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust," she said Monday.
"We want to keep talking in these settings, of course, but that would be a problem."
Netanyahu believes the so-called P5+1 group of global powers is planning to ease international sanctions without the ironclad safeguards needed to deny Tehran a nuclear bomb.
The US administration says that is just not true.
"This president has made clear that he's not going to sign a bad deal," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
No nuclear arms for Iran
Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, weighed into the fight on Monday when she addressed 16,000 pro-Israel activists in the US capital.
"The United States of America will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, period," she said.
Taking the podium shortly after Power, Netanyahu remained unswerving in his opposition to Obama's policy.
"The purpose of my address to Congress... is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel," he said.
"My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama," he told the lobby group AIPAC's annual conference.
"Israel and the United States agree that Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons. But we disagree on the best way to prevent them from developing those weapons."
The Obama administration is furious that Netanyahu was invited to address Congress by Republican Speaker John Boehner, without either party informing the White House.
Netanyahu himself is running for a third consecutive term -- which would be a fourth overall -- in an Israeli election on March 17.
"Our commitments to our partnership with Israel are bedrock commitments rooted in shared fundamental values cemented through decades of bipartisan reinforcement," Power said.
"This partnership should never be politicized."
Netanyahu denied his acts had harmed the traditionally close US-Israeli alliance.
"Reports of the demise of the Israeli-US relations are not only premature, they're just wrong."
The pace of the negotiations meant to rein in Iran's suspected nuclear arms program in exchange for sanctions relief has gathered pace as the March 31 deadline nears.
Mark Heller, a political analyst at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, says that after years of warning about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, it is hard to imagine what new angle Netanyahu will pursue today.
"He's been over this ground before many times and... if he doesn't come up with something truly explosive it's going to be a big letdown," he told AFP.
"I think he's going to have to pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat and reveal some information that's not out there in the public domain."
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