This will be a huge news topic this week considering the tension between House Speaker John Boehner and the White House over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. The divide has occurred because Congress itself made the formal invite and bypassed the Obama administration, which would normally be in charge of hosting foreign dignitaries and setting the agenda.
Report from the Washington Post:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to a joint meeting of Congress will probably be the most important speech of his career — and one that has already jeopardized relations between Israel and the United States.
On Tuesday morning, Netanyahu will confront an American president and insist that the future of the State of Israel, and the world, is imperiled by a pending “bad deal” with Iran on its nuclear program.
Also hanging in the balance is Netanyahu’s own political future. Just two weeks after the speech, Netanyahu will either be reelected to a historic fourth term as prime minister or be out of a job.
Netanyahu has spent three terms as Israeli prime minister focused on the dangers posed by Iran. In his first address to Congress in 1996, he warned that an atomic Iran would “presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.”
Undoubtedly there will be reaction from many of the 2016 presidential candidates on both sides of this divide. We’ll bring some of that reaction tomorrow after the speech.
