WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the Obama administration to task Sunday for using Twitter to call his stance on Iran “wrong for 25 years.”
Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether he was offended by the Friday tweet from the White House, Netanyahu retorted: “I think it’s useful to remember who your ally is and who your enemy is.”
The personal relationship between President Obama and Netanyahu has been strained for some time, but it sank to its lowest ebb with the weekend’s social media sparring.
The White House National Security Council tweeted a link to an opinion piece by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that said Netanyahu’s predictions on Iran have been wrong for 25 years. Zakaria compares Netanyahu’s alternatives to a nuclear deal to a Peter Pan fantasy “utterly divorced from reality.”
“Interesting take,” the White House tweeted of the Washington Post article.
It was a response to Netanyahu’s emotional speech before Congress on Tuesday in which he rebuked Obama’s Iran nuclear negotiations as a threat to Israel’s existence.
On Sunday, the prime minister defended his predictions — and also responded with his own Twitter dig.
“If I had to choose, I would retweet something that relates to Iran and that’s the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent tweet in which he cites nine ways and reasons that Israel should be destroyed,” Netanyahu said.
Obama gave Netanyahu the cold shoulder when the prime minister addressed Congress without White House approval. Obama wants Congress to hold off on further sanctions against Iran until the nuclear negotiations are complete and believes Israel’s demands are unachievable and stand in the way of a good deal.
The next month will be a test for Iran to demonstrate whether it can accept “an extraordinarily reasonable deal” and prove “they are only interested in peaceful nuclear programs,” Obama told CBS on Saturday.
Obama pledged to walk away from a deal without stringent inspections to determine if Tehran is developing nuclear weapons.
“If there’s no deal, then we walk away,” Obama told CBS’s Bill Plante.
Netanyahu’s disagreements with Obama have divided Congress.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) echoed Netanyahu’s skepticism of a deal. “Iran is our enemy,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Netanyahu’s attempt to undermine Obama is unacceptable.
“What Prime Minister Netanyahu did here was something that no ally of the United States would have done,” she said.