US Senate Unanimously Defies Obama, Welcomes Netanyahu While Middle Eastern News Agencies Report Obama Threatened to Shoot Down Israeli Jets

By Clyde. The Senate unanimously passed a resolution welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress.

No Democrat senators sponsored the resolution but none caved to reported pressure from the White House to vote against it.

“The Senate warmly welcomes the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his visit to the United States,” the resolution reads, “which provides a timely opportunity to reinforce the United States-Israel relationship.”

The resolution goes on to vow that the U.S. will “strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself from threats to its very survival.”

The Obama administration has been working to sabotage the address, fearing that it may hurt its relationship with Iran. The White House has caved to Iran’s demands and is expected to allow the Muslim nation to retain the most controversial aspects of its nuclear program. (Read more from “Senate Welcomes Netanyahu” HERE)

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Netanyahu’s Address to Congress Will Be the Most Important Speech of His Life

By William Booth. 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.”

His supporters call him prescient; his detractors say Netanyahu has been warning for 20 years that “time is running out” on the Iran threat. His critics say Netanyahu is a broken record, a Cassandra obsessed, willing to deeply damage U.S.-Israeli relations in a futile confrontation with the United States that wins Israel nothing. (Read more from this story HERE)

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News Agencies in Middle East Report that Obama Threatened to Shoot Down Israeli Planes if They Attacked Iran

By Jeffrey Shapiro. President Obama threatened last year, according to Middle Eastern news outlets Sunday, to use the U.S. military to shoot down Israeli fighter jets if they attempted to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities — reports the administration denounced later Sunday as flatly untrue.

Mr. Obama’s threat reportedly deterred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from dispatching warplanes into Iran after Israel discovered that the U.S. had entered into secret talks with Tehran and that the two countries had signed an agreement, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

In a statement to The Washington Times early Sunday evening, a senior administration said “that report is totally false.”

Al-Jarida also reported Sunday that “well placed” sources confirmed an unnamed Israeli minister disclosed the plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Mr. Obama replied by warning that he would foil the plan by shooting down Israeli jets before they could reach their target destinations.

“Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security,” the report said. (Read more from this story HERE)

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