Diplomacy is about relationships but Netanyahu and Obama don’t really have one. | REUTERS Bibi vs. Barack

President Barack Obama’s national security team had every reason to believe they’d be spared a Bibi eruption before Election Day.

Earlier this year, U.S. and Israeli officials had informally agreed to stop airing their well-documented disagreements over how to halt Iran’s nuclear program, according to two people familiar with the situation.


But on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke the tacit détente. He accused the Obama administration, albeit not by name, of going squishy on Tehran by not creating concrete benchmarks — “red lines,” he called them — for a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The latest flare-up in the tempestuous Obama-Netanyahu relationship was overshadowed Wednesday by the carnage at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But U.S. officials believe the intense debate over the allied response to Iran’s nuclear program — and the sharp personal, policy and political differences between the two leaders — rivals the perils posed by the excesses of the Arab Spring.

( PHOTOS: Anti-U.S. attacks in Cairo, Libya)

Diplomacy is, ultimately, about relationships. Obama and Netanyahu don’t really have one. And that’s created an odd and unwelcome rivalry among allies — a testy liberal-vs.-conservative chess match that mirrors Obama’s contest with Mitt Romney, who has known Netanyahu for years.

“There is a lack of rapport between these two men — they don’t like each other very much. Plus, there are serious differences between our interests and Israel’s own security interests,” said former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who was present for several of Obama’s nine face-to-face meetings with Netanyahu.

“I don’t think that Netanyahu is trying to influence the outcome of our election, though a lot of people see it that way,” Crowley said. “It’s about agenda-setting. He just watched two conventions where Israel and Iran were mentioned, but not significantly discussed, even with the whole rigmarole [at the Democratic convention] about Jerusalem in the platform. He’s trying to get it onto the front burner.”

But this isn’t just about policy. It’s personal. On the day Netanyahu threw down the Iran gauntlet, someone close to the hawkish, MIT-educated prime minister let it leak that Obama had declined a face-to-face meeting at next month’s United Nations General Assembly in New York to hash things out. The chatter, later denied by the White House, was that Obama said he would be too busy, and one of those unbreakable commitments was with David Letterman.

If all this has a faintly comic vibe, the stakes couldn’t be higher or potential outcomes uglier, from the possibility of a regional war to a conflagration involving at least one member of the nuclear club. So, even as the White House scrambled Wednesday to deal with mob violence in Cairo, Egypt, and the murder of Obama’s ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, it had one eye firmly fixed on Netanyahu — who sensed an opportunity to press his anti-Iran case.

“Bibi knows that this is his moment of maximum leverage. His ability to influence Obama after the election will be zilch,” said Kenneth Pollack, senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, who thinks Netanyahu’s drumbeat on Iran motivated the administration to push for a harder regimen of sanctions than Obama would otherwise have pursued.

“Netanyahu’s goal is one of two things: to get Iran to stop enriching, or to get the U.S. to help strike Iran. He’s not trying to get the green light to strike Iran on his own, that would be a very bad third choice,” Pollack added. “Have these outbursts been successful? Absolutely. The administration is very concerned he’ll strike on his own — and they are driven as much by their fear Israel will start a war as they are by anything Iran is actually doing.”

Even if he had intended to remain mum, U.S. politics have outpaced Netanyahu, who is now convinced that Obama will prevail in November, according to a former top ranking U.S. intelligence official who recently visited Israel to huddle with top Likud security officials in Netanyahu’s orbit.

“They are grimly accepting the reality Mitt won’t win,” the former official said.

The idea that a foreign leader would be so attuned to American domestic politics would be strange for almost any country other than Israel. But the always-fuzzy line between American and Israeli politics has been nearly erased this year. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, for one, has pledged to commit $100 million to defeat Obama, whom he views as dangerously anti-Israel.

“I stand with our friends in Israel. I stand with our allies,” Romney said during a meet-and-greet with supporters in Florida Wednesday, according to ABC News. “I can’t ever imagine, if the prime minister of Israel asked to meet with me, I can’t ever imagine saying no. … They’re our friends, they’re our closest allies in the Middle East.”

While Romney basked in Obama’s troubles, liberals in Israel — a country so linked to the U.S. it was once called the sixth borough of New York City — accused Netanyahu of trying to sway American Jews, especially older Israel-centric Northeast transplants living in Florida, to Romney’s cause.

“Israeli meddling in internal U.S. affairs and turning the U.S. administration from an ally to ‘an enemy’ has caused us severe damage,” said Shaul Mofaz, leader of the centrist opposition Kadima party, during a Wednesday session of the Knesset.

“Please explain to us: who is Israel’s greatest enemy — the U.S. or Iran? Who do you fear more — [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad or Obama? Which regime is more important to overthrow — the one in Washington, or in Tehran?” he asked.

Bradley Burston, a columnist with the liberal Haaretz newspaper, thinks Netanyahu is growing increasingly nervous, in part because Obama seems more likely to win reelection now than before the conventions.

“[T]here’s been a certain air of desperation in the ways Netanyahu has continued to pursue this policy,” he wrote. “The desperation has grown in the face of the opposition of growing and already large numbers of respected current and former Israeli security, nuclear, diplomatic and intelligence experts to any attack on Iran at this time, and more pointedly, against a unilateral Israeli offensive. … And, in particular, when Barack Obama’s campaign appears to be surging.”

White House officials take a much more charitable view, at least in public.

Netanyahu, they say, sees war with a nuclear-armed Iran as a 21st century holocaust likely to kill as many Jews as the 6 million exterminated by the Nazis — a view shared by many in the West Wing and Foggy Bottom. But that doesn’t mean they like the way Netnayahu presses his case.

Obama’s true feelings seemed to slip out during a hot-mic moment last November, in a post-news conference chat with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a summit in Cannes.

Sarkozy said “I cannot bear” Netanyahu, adding that he was “a liar.”

Obama didn’t disagree. “You’re fed up, but I have to deal with him every day,” he responded.

At the time, White House officials said Obama was just being polite, and not endorsing Sarkozy’s point of view. This week, they denied published reports that Obama had also rejected Netanyahu’s request to meet with Obama in Washington next week. No such request was made or rejected, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

For good measure, Obama called Netanyahu late Tuesday to smooth things over. It wasn’t clear what had been accomplished, though spokesmen for both leaders claimed there had never really been any disagreement in the first place.

“President Obama spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu for an hour tonight as a part of their ongoing consultations,” an Obama spokesman said. “The two leaders discussed the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, and our close cooperation on Iran and other security issues.”

The otherwise innocuous readout concluded with a clean-up sentence: “Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor was a request for a meeting ever denied.”

Privately, American officials were disappointed but not surprised Netanyahu had gone public, yet again, with his gripes.

Few top administration officials really expected Netanyahu to remain completely absent from a closely contested U.S. presidential election. All that’s needed to understand the Israeli leader is a calendar, they say: If there is a consequential meeting scheduled, like an AIPAC conference in Washington or next month’s general assembly meeting — or an election — Netanyahu is likely to use it as leverage to move the superpower closer to his position.

The paradox, senior American officials told POLITICO, is that bilateral military and intelligence contacts between the two countries have seldom been more productive, for all the public squawking.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — whose weekend comments pushing back against the notion of an Iran deadline sparked Netanyahu’s “red lines” remark — enjoy close relationships with other top Israeli officials, especially former Labor prime ministers Ehud Barak, currently Netanyahu’s defense minister, and Shimon Peres.

But U.S. conservatives allied with Romney said that was pure whitewash, concealing a steadily worsening relationship with a vital ally facing an existential threat.

And as the allies wrangle, Iran continues to pursue its program at secret locations, according to international inspectors who say sanctions and cyberattacks on nuclear facilities have slowed but not stopped the Islamic state’s bid to join Israel as a Mideast nuclear power.

“It’s a lot simpler and easier than people realize,” said Matthew Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “The Israelis feel they are looking down a gun barrel and the policy of the administration is to let the clock run down. Obama has a containment policy with a nuclear Iran. As things creep further and further along, the window is closing.”