During his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, Obama promised to veto any new sanctions on Iran that could compromise the progress his administration has made in stunting the country’s nuclear program.
"Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we've halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material,” the president said.
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) January 21, 2015
Obama “expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran,” Boehner told fellow Republicans at a closed-door meeting Wednesday morning, according to a senior GOP aide. “Two words: ‘Hell no!’ … We’re going to do no such thing.”
In announcing the move, Boehner said he invited Netanyahu to address Congress “on the grave threats of radical Islam and the threat that Iran poses to not only the Middle East, but frankly to the world.”
“America and Israel have always stood together,” he continued. “We have a shared cause, we have common ideals, and now we must rise to that moment once again.”
If Netanyahu accepts the invitation, the prime minister will deliver his speech just weeks ahead of the March deadline for the Obama administration and world powers to agree to a political framework with Iran about its nuclear program.
The White House suggested that the invitation from Boehner to Netanyahu would be a departure from protocol.
"We haven't heard from the Israelis directly about the trip at all," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
"The typical protocol would suggest that the leader of a country would contact the leader of another country when he is travelling there. That is certainly how President Obama's trips are planned."
While their countries remain close allies, Netanyahu and Obama have clashed over the president’s attempts to broker a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu warned that the Iranians will only use an agreement as a shield for covert attempts to gain a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu has twice addressed Congress – once in 1996 and again in 2011.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing held Wednesday to address the possibility of imposing sanctions on Iran, lawmakers bombarded Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken with concerns about the Obama administration's dealings with Iran, the Daily Mail reported.
“The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran,” said committee chairman Senator Bob Menendez, who along with Senator Mark Kirk, has sponsored a bill targeting Iran if it does not agree to certain demands by July 6.
“And it feeds to the Iranian narrative of victimization, when they are the ones with original sin: An illicit nuclear weapons program going back over the course of 20 years that they are unwilling to come clean on.”
