Netanyahu's speech to Congress: What Israel's leader can and cannot say

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At the moment, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is putting the finishing touches on his speech to a joint session of Congress, scheduled (despite strong opposition from the White House) for Tuesday, March 3.

This is a hard speech to write.

Bibi’s challenge is to explain this in language that is clear to the American people—his real audience—without insulting President Obama and his supporters.

The problem is not with the message. Netanyahu knows exactly what he wants to say: That the nuclear deal that the U.S. administration is pushing with the Islamic Republic of Iran poses a terrible and unacceptable threat to Israel’s national security.

Bibi’s challenge is to explain this in language that is clear to the American people—his real audience—without insulting President Obama and his supporters.

Bibi’s challenge is to explain this in language that is clear to the American people—his real audience—without insulting President Obama and his supporters.

That won’t be easy. Simply put (and Bibi can’t put it this simply) the president of the United States can’t be trusted. This is not a perspective unique to Netanyahu. Obama is infamous in the Middle East as a bumbling, irresponsible leader whose good intentions often wind his friends up in the soup.

The Obama administration has displayed an amazing ability to misread and mislead the Middle East.

The president withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq despite warnings from his own senior advisers that doing so would create a vacuum followed by chaos (named, we now know, ‘Islamic State'  or -- as the president prefers --ISIL).

In Egypt, Obama fell for the media fairytale of the Arab Spring and encouraged the overthrow of a lifelong American ally Hosni Mubarak in the name of democracy. This frightened every friendly Arab leader (none of whom are democrats, starting with the Saudi Royal Family. He compounded the blunder by supporting the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo. And he made things even worse by opposing the overthrow of the Brotherhood regime by a pro-western, anti-Jihad general, Abdul Fattah el Sisi.

In 2011, Obama “led from behind” as a grand western military coalition overthrew Libya’s Colonel Kaddafi. When he was killed the coalition declared itself a winner and left.

Unfortunately, the country didn’t have that option. Full scale civil war ensured and America’s Libyan friends found themselves abandoned to the mercies of warring tribes, brigands and Muslim holy warriors.

Following the Arab Spring, civil war broke out in Syria. President Bashir Assad waged war on his civilian opposition. This supposedly outraged President Obama’s moral sensibilities, and he declared in no uncertain terms that Assad must go. He even threatened to use American airpower.

Years have passed, since then. Assad is still in power in Damascus and “moderate Syrians” who were dumb enough to count on Obama’s aid are either dead or living as refugees.

Barely a month ago, the government of Yemen, often cited by Obama as close American ally in the successful fight against Al Qaeda, was unceremoniously overthrown. The administration declared itself really surprised and evacuated its embassy in Sa’ana, a move reminiscent of the flight from Saigon.

In case after case, governments and people in the Middle East that have relied on the foresight, judgment and promises of the United States have wound up regretting it. This is not something Prime Minister Netanyahu can say in his speech to Congress. It would not be tactful. But it is implicit in his decision to turn to Congress in the first place.

The details of the proposed agreement with Iran are not yet final, but details aren’t really the issue. American credibility is.

The administration wants a deal that would allow Iran keep a limited nuclear program, put it under uncertain international inspection for a decade or so, end the supervision and hope for the best. That works fine if your goal is to leave office in two years, move to Hawaii and go down as the president who made the historic breakthrough with Teheran. But it isn’t really very good if you are going to be Iran’s enemy when the supervisors go home.

Netanyahu is not going to tell the American people that their president is trying to con him for the sake of his legacy, although that is precisely what he thinks. That, too, would be impolitic.

Instead, he will praise Obama and John Kerry for their tireless efforts, say he is certain that the administration is acting in good faith as a friend of Israel, but suggest to Congress that it can assist, not hinder, American diplomacy by voting for stiff new sanctions. He will remind Congress that Iran remains dedicated, publicly and proudly, to the goal of annihilating the Jewish State and that no deal, no matter how nicely drawn, can paper over that fact.

Israel simply can’t trust the Ayatollahs to keep their word, Netanyahu will say. What he won’t say, out loud at least, is that he trusts the Obama administration’s guarantees even less.