President Obama is alleged to have stopped an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets, according to reports to emerge from the Middle East at the weekend

The threat from the U.S. forced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to abort a planned attack on Iraq, reported Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

Netanyahu will be in Washington for an address to Congress on Tuesday aimed squarely at derailing Obama's cherished bid for a diplomatic deal with Tehran.

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President Obama is alleged to have thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets

For six years, President Obama and Netanyahu have been on a collision course over how to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, a high-stakes endeavor both men see as a centerpiece of their legacies.

The Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran last year after discovering that the U.S. and Iran were involved in secret talks over Iran's nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel's back.

The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

According to the report, '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.'

For six years, President Obama and Netanyahu have been on a collision course over how to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, a high-stakes endeavor both men see as a centerpiece of their legacies

The sources added that Gantz and his commanders prepared the requested plan and that Israeli fighter jets trained for several weeks in order to make sure the plans would work successfully.

Israeli fighter jets reportedly even carried out experimental flights in Iran's airspace after they managed to break through radars.

Stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb has become a defining challenge for both Obama and Netanyahu, yet one they have approached far differently.

For Obama, getting Iran to verifiably prove it is not pursuing nuclear weapons would be a bright spot in a foreign policy arena in which numerous outcomes are uncertain and would validate his early political promise to negotiate with Iran without conditions.

Netanyahu considers unacceptable any deal with Iran that doesn't end its nuclear program entirely and opposes the diplomatic pursuit as one that minimizes what he considers an existential threat to Israel.

Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful and exists only to produce energy for civilian use.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was forced to abort a planned attack on Iraq after the U.S. threatened to shoot down Israeli jets

'Through scaremongering, falsification, propaganda and creating a false atmosphere even inside other countries, (Israel) is attempting to prevent peace,' Iran's top nuclear negotiator said on Saturday in Tehran.

'I believe that these attempts are in vain and should not impede reaching a (nuclear) agreement,' said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

U.S. and Iranian officials reported progress in the latest talks on a deal that would freeze Tehran's nuclear program for 10 years, but allow it to slowly ramp up in the final years of the accord.

Obama has refused to meet Netanyahu during his visit, with the White House citing its policy of not meeting with foreign leaders soon before their elections.

Vice President Joe Biden and Kerry will both be out of the country on trips announced only after Netanyahu accepted the GOP offer to speak on Capitol Hill.

The prime minister is scheduled to speak on Monday at AIPAC's annual policy conference.

The Obama administration will be represented at the event by U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and national security adviser Susan Rice, who criticized Netanyahu's plans to address Congress as 'destructive' to the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The Iran dispute has spotlighted rifts in a relationship that has been frosty from the start. Obama and Netanyahu lack any personal chemistry, leaving them with virtually no reservoir of goodwill to get them through their policy disagreements.

Activists rally and protest outside Fox News Building on 6th Ave and 48th St to protest the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to address Congress on Tuesday

Within months of taking office, Obama irritated Israel when, in an address to the Arab world, he challenged the legitimacy of Jewish settlements on Palestinian-claimed land and cited the Holocaust as the justification for Israel's existence, not any historical Jewish tie to the land.

The White House was furious when Netanyahu's government defied Obama and announced plans to construct new housing units in East Jerusalem while Biden was visiting Israel in 2010.

Additional housing plans that year upended U.S. efforts to restart peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The tension between Obama and Netanyahu was laid bare in an unusually public manner during an Oval Office meeting in 2011. In front of a crowd of journalists, the prime minister lectured Obama at length on Israel's history and dismissed the president's conditions for restarting peace talks.

Later that year, a microphone caught Obama telling his then-French counterpart in a private conversation that while he may be fed up with Netanyahu, 'You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day.'

Despite suspecting that Netanyahu was cheering for his rival in the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama tried to reset relations with the prime minister after his re-election.

He made his first trip as president to Israel and the two leaders went to great lengths to put on a happy front, referring to each other by their first names and touring some of the region's holy sites together.

An anti-Israel demonstrators wearing masks bearing the likeness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and holding up 'bloody' hands in a protest outside the Washington Convention Center on Sunday

The healing period was to be short-lived.

Another attempt at Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed. Israeli officials were withering in their criticism of Kerry, who had shepherded the talks, with the country's defense minister calling him 'obsessive' and 'messianic.'

The Obama administration returned the favor last summer with its own unusually unsparing criticism of Israel for causing civilian deaths when war broke out in Gaza.

The U.S. and Israel have hit rocky patches before.

The settlement issue has been a persistent thorn in relations, compounded by profound unhappiness in Washington over Israeli military operations in the Sinai, Iraq and Lebanon during the Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations that led those presidents to take or consider direct punitive measures.

Yet through it all, the United States has remained Israel's prime benefactor, providing it with $3 billion a year in assistance and defending it from criticism at the United Nations and elsewhere.

'We have brought relations back in the past and we will do it again now because at the end of the day they are based on mutual interests,' said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and informal adviser to Netanyahu.