Netanyahu to hold bipartisan meeting with US lawmakers

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a meeting with a bipartisan Congressional delegation while in Washington next week, a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said Thursday.

The invitation was extended by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and minority leader Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), and comes as tensions between Jerusalem and Washington remain high over the planned speech.

The closed-door meeting will likely take place over lunch Tuesday, right after Netanyahu’s speech, the official said.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu reportedly turned down an offer to meet with Senate Democrats while in Washington, saying the sit-down could be seen in a negative, partisan light.

“I believe that doing so at this time could compound the misperception of partisanship regarding my upcoming visit,” Netanyahu responded in a letter to Senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein.

US House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress March 3, but in an apparent breach of protocol the top Republican did so without consulting the White House or Democratic congressional leaders.

The planned speech, in which Netanyahu will lobby against a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, has angered Obama administration officials.

On Tuesday, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the issue was proving destructive, but on Thursday, pro-Israel lobby AIPAC announced that Rice would attend their conference next week, in an apparent bid to ease tensions.

The White House had reportedly considered sending only a low level representative to the confab as anger simmered over Netanyahu’s speech.

A senior US official said the speech was exposing increasing strain in the relationship between Jerusalem and Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu seems fairly adamant on having this confrontation,” the anonymous official said. “In the past we’ve been able to weather periods of disagreement but they weren’t as sharp and public as this, for a sustained period of time.”

Netanyahu said Wednesday that world powers “have given up” on stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons in ongoing negotiations.

“From the agreement that is forming, it appears that they (world powers) have given up on that commitment (to thwart Iran) and are accepting that Iran will gradually, within a few years, develop capabilities to produce material for many nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. “They might accept this but I am not willing to accept this.”

Another senior American official told the Wall Street Journal that Netanyahu is showing that “there’s no nuclear deal he would support.”

“And that’s clarifying in some fashion because he’s not even making the case that he made last year that more sanctions can help get a better deal,” the official said.

The West fears Iran may be attempting to build an atomic bomb with its nuclear program. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

Netanyahu’s speech is controversial because it puts Israel on a collision course with the Obama administration as it negotiates with Iran over its nuclear program — talks that in their current form could lead to a deal that potentially poses an existential risk to Israel, Netanyahu has warned.

Thus, he intends to argue before Congress on March 3 that the international community should increase its pressure on Iran, rather than ease sanctions against it under the reported terms of the emerging nuclear deal.

The speech is also set just two weeks before the prime minister faces elections back home, a fact that critics in Israel and the US have seized on to accuse Netanyahu of using the address to drum up support for his Likud party.

Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany — known as the P5+1 — have been seeking a comprehensive accord that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb, in return for an easing of sanctions.

AP contributed to this report.