THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scheduled a phone call for late morning Friday with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

President Obama refused to meet with Netanyahu on his trip to the United States, and the Israeli government presumably thought a meeting with the opposition candidate in the absence of one with the sitting president would be too provocative. But there was apparently an eagerness on the Israeli prime minister’s part to talk with Romney in order to help win as broad American support as possible for the red lines he outlined in his United Nations speech with respect to the Iranian nuclear program.