Israel denounces US and EU's Iran diplomacy

The Israeli PM’s anti-Iran speech made a big noise in Washington, but means little for US or EU policy in the Middle East.

Republican Party congressmen in the US assembly gave Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu i a roaring endorsement on Tuesday (3 March).

The Israeli leader said the US and EU-brokered non-proliferation deal, currently being discussed in Switzerland, will “pave the way” for Iran to get nuclear weapons within a “year”, or maybe within “weeks”, if it decides to do so.

He compared Iran to Nazi Germany, and to Isis, the apocalyptic cult in Iraq and Syria.

He also described it as a threat to Israel, to US citizens, and to “all humanity”, adding “the days when Jewish people remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies are over”.

US president Barack Obama i boycotted Netanyahu’s visit. More than 50 congressmen from the ruling Democratic Party also boycotted the speech.

They did it because they saw it as politicking ahead of Israeli elections.

They also saw it as a Republican attempt to discredit Obama in the face of an Iranian bogeyman, with the Netanyahu event organised by the Republican speaker in Congress against Obama’s wishes.

For its part, Iran reacted mildly.

Its UN ambassador, Gholamali Khoshroo, wrote in the New York Times that Netanyahu’s “scaremongering” is “a smoke screen that relegates the Palestinian question to the margins”. He added that Israeli “aggression and … occupation” of Palestine feeds Isis-type radicalism.

But the event did not disrupt the so-called E3+3 nuclear talks.

US secretary of state John Kerry i told media in Geneva on Tuesday: "We're working away. Productively”.

The EU foreign relations chief, Federica Mogherini i, who chairs the E3+3 meetings after her predecessor, Catherine Ashton i, became her unpaid advisor, sided with Obama.

"Spreading fears is not helpful at this stage," she said on Netanyahu, AFP reports.

The Obama-Netanyahu rift does pose questions for US, and by extension, EU, policy in the Middle East, however.

Analysts say it makes Netanyahu less likely to launch air strikes on Iran - an option he has repeatedly mentioned - while Obama is in power.

It also makes Obama less likely to try to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks if Netanyahu is re-elected.

Alon Ben-Meir, an international relations scholar at New York University, says the EU, in any case, appears willing to hang on to US coat-tails.

“For all intents and purposes, the US has assumed the leading role and Iran also understands that only the US will have, in the final analysis, the last word on any [nuclear] deal that the parties may agree upon”, he told EUobserver i.

Meanwhile, the depth of the US-Israel rift shouldn’t be exaggerated.

The State Department, one week prior to Netanyahu’s inflammatory visit, asked Congress for another $3 billion in aid for Israel.

Ben-Meir added that Obama and Netanyahu fundamentally agree that Iran must be stopped from gaining hegemony in the Middle East.

“The Obama administration … is currently developing a strategy of containment not related only to the prospect that Iran may obtain [nuclear] weapons, but also on how to contain the fallout of a potential US military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities should that option become necessary", he noted.

He also said there are limits to how far the US will push Israel to make peace with Palestine.

“The US, not now or at any time in the future, will impose sanctions on Israel, nor would it encourage the EU to do so”.