The nation’s leading pro-Israel group on Sunday announced it will try to get Congress to stop a potential nuclear deal with Iran, a move that signals a key break with the Obama White House.
“Congress must review this deal,” Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said in remarks reported Sunday afternoon by the Wall Street Journal.
The administration will send two of its top foreign policy representatives to AIPAC’s three-day policy conference that opened Sunday, the Journal reported. The two include National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who recently said the Netanyahu speech is “destructive” to the American-Israeli relationship, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to speak to Congress on Tuesday, in a speech that has roiled Washington — Netanyahu was invited to speak without the White House’s knowledge by House Speaker John Boehner, and many key Democratic political figures have said they will not attend the speech.
Republicans and other critics of President Obama’s foreign policy have complained that the administration is wrong to negotiate with Tehran and that it has allowed the once-close relationship between the U.S. and Israel to falter at a time when Islamic extremism, such as the rise of the Islamic State, threatens both countries.
The White House has said it objected to the Netanyahu invitation on grounds that it has a longstanding policy not to meet with foreign dignitaries close to an election in their home nations, and Israel has an election coming up in two weeks.
However, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to seek this weekend to try to smoothe things over, saying Netanyahu “is welcome to speak in the United States.
“We recognize the main goal here is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Kerry said on ABC’s “This Week.”
