Obama tried to convince Netanyahu to give sanctions a chance

US President Barack Obama tried to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to back down from a military confrontation with Iran and give sanctions a chance to work, according to a report in The New York Times Thursday. That discussion reportedly took place during a phone conversation in January.

White House officials walked away from that conversation convinced that Washington and Jerusalem were working according to the same timeline regarding the Iranian threat, the paper reported.

But since then, a gap has grown between the US and Israel regarding how far Iran is from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

According to Israel, Iran is close to reaching what Defense Minister Ehud Barak calls a “zone of immunity” — a point at which an attack would no longer be capable of stopping the Iranian program. US officials quoted in the Times said they believed Iran was still far from reaching that point.

The White House released a press statement on January 12 saying a phone conversation between Obama and Netanyahu included “Iran-related developments” and a discussion of the “international community’s efforts to hold Iran accountable.” The Times reported the main focus of that conversation was the predicted timeline for Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli and US officials have met many times over the past weeks, and reports say the Iranian nuclear program is the main focus of these talks. Diplomats have spoken frequently, and earlier this week Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman visited Washington for the first time in 18 months, meeting with senior officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Intelligence and military leaders have been meeting as well, with Mossad head Tamir Pardo visiting Washington last week and Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey visiting Israel in mid-January. A recent report by NBC describes how a military strike against Iran might look.