Conservatives sometimes argue that President Obama treats America’s enemies with more respect than he does its foreign allies. That argument was bolstered this week by the revelation that the White House spied on the Israeli government during the lead up to the nuclear deal with Iran, and that this snooping swept up correspondence with members of Congress.
The discovery will erode Obama’s already strained relations with Israel and Congress, two institutions he says he wants to work with in his final year in office.
Two years ago this month, after embarrassing revelations that the U.S. spied on the heads of state of ally nations, Obama banned the practice, saying, “The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to know what they think about an issue, I’ll pick up the phone and call them, rather than turning to surveillance.”
But Obama didn’t do that. Nor did he ask Congress for permission to eavesdrop on members’ communications with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the National Security Agency continued to surveil friendly heads of state, Netanyahu, and captured private communications between Israeli officials and American lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.
The president allowed this, first out of fear that Israel would strike Iran’s nuclear facilities without warning, then to combat Netanyahu’s campaign to scuttle the deal itself.
The NSA learned that Netanyahu and his advisors had leaked details of the nuclear negotiations with Iran, discovered through Israeli spying operations, in order to undermine the talks. The agency also learned that Netanyahu coordinated with pro-Israel groups in the U.S. on messaging and urged ambivalent members of Congress to oppose the deal.
Israel had good reason to oppose the deal. As we wrote in September, the terms are “generous toward Iran, light on verification and not terribly reassuring toward Arab and Israeli allies in the region.” The deal did not enjoy majority support in Congress or among the American public.
Obama’s spying is a betrayal of his earlier promise not to spy on allies, and an abuse of executive power — yes, another one — against Congress.
If he hopes to achieve anything of substance in the last year of his presidency, Obama will need to work with Republicans and with America’s oldest Middle Eastern ally.
He seemed to understand this a year ago when, after Republicans won the Senate and expanded their House majority, Obama insisted that he would compromise with the GOP and end their deadlock.
The famously chilly relationship between Obama and Netanyahu seemed to thaw a little when Netanyahu visited the White House in November. The Israeli PM said the encounter was “one of the best meetings I’ve had with Obama. The conversation was in very good spirits and very honest. No one hid the disagreements between us. Rather, we focused on how to go forward.”
One wonders if he would wish to repeat those words now.
