Obama: ‘Inappropriate’ to meet Israeli leader

It would be “inappropriate” to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits Washington two weeks before he stands for reelection, President Obama said in an interview airing Wednesday.

{mosads}“I’m declining to meet with him simply because our general policy is we don’t meet with any world leader two weeks before their election,” Obama told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “I think that’s inappropriate, and that’s true with some of our closest allies.”

Netanyahu is visiting the United States at the request of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who invited the Israeli leader to address a joint session of Congress to express his concerns over the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran. Boehner did not consult the White House or State Department before extending the invitation, and administration officials have cast the move as a breach of diplomatic protocol.

Republican aides say Boehner made the move in response to Obama’s threat to veto legislation that would have imposed new sanctions on Iran were the nuclear talks to fail, which some lawmakers have cast as an attempt to exclude Congress from the process.

Netanyahu has been openly critical of the negotiations, casting Tehran as untrustworthy, and likely sees the speech as an opportunity to excite his conservative political base before Election Day.

The president has argued that the bill would be interpreted by Tehran and U.S. allies as a violation of the agreement not to impose new sanctions while the talks were ongoing.

The legislation, jointly sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), was introduced Tuesday night. But in a political win for the president, Menendez and nine other Democrats signed a letter vowing to withhold support for sanctions legislation if Republicans brought it to the floor before late March, when negotiators hope to have a framework deal in place.

Obama said that moving forward with legislation now would be a “mistake” that would “undermine diplomacy at this critical time for no good reason.”

He argued that all signs — including statements from Israeli intelligence — indicated that Iran had abided by the terms of the interim agreement preceding the negotiations, which freezes major aspects of the Iranian nuclear program.

“Iran’s program has not advanced,” Obama said. “And we had the chance of providing a mechanism where we can verify that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, and Iran has the ability over time to re-enter the community of nations as a responsible player.”

He also argued that sanctions legislation could give China and Russia an excuse to abandon their support for the current penalties against Iran, while leaving the U.S. to blame for the collapse of the negotiations.

“If, in fact, we don’t get a deal, [we should] make sure that it’s the Iranians’ fault, because they couldn’t say ‘yes’ to a reasonable deal,” Obama said.

The president also said he was “pretty confident” that he could sell an eventual deal to skeptical Republican members of Congress.

“If I can prove that the deal we’ve put in place assures us through indisputable verification mechanisms that Iran cannot achieve breakout capacity, if I’ve got a bunch of scientists and nuclear experts saying this assures us that Iran is not on the brink of being a nuclear weapons power, then that’s a public debate we should have,” Obama said. “And I will then ask every member of Congress to ask why would we reject that deal and prefer a potential military option that would be less effective in constraining Iranian’s nuclear program and would have extraordinarily ramifications at a time when we’ve already got too many conflicts in the Middle East.”