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A group of 23 U.S. Congressional Democrats on Thursday urged House Speaker John Boehner, who has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver a speech before Congress in March, to delay the speech till after the Israeli elections.
In a letter to Boehner, Democrats argued that Boehner was using Netanyahu in his own rivalry against U.S. President Barack Obama over a new Iran sanctions bill.
"As members of Congress who support Israel, we share concern that it appears that you are using a foreign leader as a political tool against the president," the letter said.
"We strongly urge you to postpone this invitation until Israelis have cast their ballots and the deadline for diplomatic negotiations with Iran has passed," it said.
Netanyahu's speech is slated for March and is supposed to call for harsher sanctions on Iran during his speech.
The disputes over Netanyahu's visit came at a time when the Republican-controlled Congress is grappling with the White House over a new bipartisan bill that would impose tougher sanctions on Iran if the nuclear talks fail to yield results.
Obama said repeatedly on several occasions that he would veto any sanction bill sent to his desk. In response, Boehner last month invited Netanyahu, a predominant opponent to the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks, without prior consultation with the White House, a move blasted by the White House as "a departure from protocol."
Boehner later said he did not inform the White House prior to his invitation because of bad blood between U.S. President Barack Obama and Netanyahu.
The already frosty relations between Obama and Netanyahu turned even colder on Wednesday when the White House spokesman Josh Earnest accused the Israeli government of distorting U.S. position in the Iranian nuclear talks through selective leaks.
"There's no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate," said Earnest at the regular briefing.
"We've also been very clear about the fact that the United States is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the United States," he said.
The rare accusation came after the New York Times reported that Israeli officials complained about Washington withholding information from Israel about the Iranian nuclear talks.
Tensions between Obama and Netanyahu stem mainly from Obama's Middle East initiatives, including Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and Iranian nuclear negotiations. Netanyahu, who vocally supported Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Obama's re- election bid in 2012, will face his own re-election on March 17. Enditem
