The tension between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to percolate over the weekend when the White House National Security Council took to Twitter to post a
Washington Post op-ed by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria titled "Netanyahu enters never-never land."
Zakaria writes that Netanyahu and members of Congress who went wild for his speech last week decrying the current deal with Iran over nuclear proliferation are "utterly divorced from reality" and living in a Peter Pan fantasy world in which "Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough."
"If the deal now being negotiated fails, the most likely scenario is a repetition of the past," Zakaria wrote. "Iran will expand its nuclear program.
"If the other major powers believed that Iran’s offer was serious but U.S. and Israeli intransigence torpedoed it, they would be reluctant to enforce sanctions — and all sanctions start to leak over time anyway."
During an appearance Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation," Netanyahu told host Bob Schieffer that the reason he’s been warning about the danger posed by Iran for the past 25 years is because Iran has been trying to get a nuclear bomb for that amount of time.
Asked if he was offended by Zakaria’s contention that Netanyahu has been wrong about Iran for 25 years — and the Obama administration’s tweet — the prime minister said: "If I had to choose, I would retweet something that relates to Iran and that’s the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent tweet in which he cites nine ways and reasons that Israel should be destroyed.
"Even in these times of sometimes heated disagreement, I think it’s useful to remember who your ally is and who your enemy is."
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Discord between the Obama administration and Israel has been on the uptick since Netanyahu accepted an invite and spoke to both houses of Congress about the dangers posed by allowing Iran any nuclear capabilities.
The invitation, extended by Republican House Speaker John Boehner without White House approval, steamed Obama and his Cabinet, which did not attend the speech or meet with Netanyahu during his visit.
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