On 3 March 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu became only the second foreigner to have addressed a joint session of Congress three times, the other being Winston Churchill. The context of the speech was as important as the words he spoke during his 40 minutes at the podium. It was a decisive moment in Netanyahu’s career both in the context of his domestic political position and for the cornerstone of his foreign policy objectives – namely, stopping Iran’s nuclear programme.
Netanyahu went to Washington in the midst of an Israeli election campaign that he was struggling to dominate. Opinion polls in Israel pointed to a narrow victory for the Zionist Union (the Israeli Labour Party, led by Isaac Herzog, and Hatnuah, led by Tzipi Livni) in elections that were scheduled to take place two weeks later on 17 March.
As he stood to make his speech, wearing his favoured blue tie, the Likud was polling in the low-twenty seats mark, versus mid-twenty seats for the Zionist Union.1 For the first time in a long while, Netanyahu looked like he might lose an election in Israel.
The timing and motives for his visit to the United States were highly controversial. As well as taking place at the tail end of an election campaign back home, the visit occurred as the United States looked to finalize a deal with Iran that would bring to an end its nuclear programme. President Obama had not invited Netanyahu to Washington, and he did not meet with him during his stay. Instead, Republican Party members of Congress who were opposed to the potential deal with Iran had issued the invitation.
Netanyahu had hesitated a little before accepting it. Given the seriousness of the issue and its centrality to his foreign policy objectives, he was not overtly concerned that the invitation had not originated from the White House. What worried him more was whether the visit and speech would be seen back in Israel as political opportunism and electioneering, as an attempt at bucking the trend of his unfavourable poll ratings in the last weeks of the election campaign.
The opportunity to address Congress, along with all the coverage his visit would attract, was too much to resist. Netanyahu calculated that the risk of causing offence to a lame-duck President was outweighed by the opportunity to try to influence Congress before it considered the final deal, if one were to be agreed with Iran. In Netanyahu’s eyes, there was no contradiction in the purpose of his speech between influencing a vital public debate and public relations consideration. The two remained indelibly linked.
As the date of the speech approached he was, however, slightly taken aback by the level of controversy that it attracted in both Israel and the United States and among Jews and non-Jews. All of this, along with the barely concealed displeasure of the leader of the free world, was carefully taken into account as the speech was drafted and softened a little around the edges. The intention was to make it sound less like what it really represented: a challenge to the foreign policy of the United States, being presented by a foreigner, in the cradle of American democracy.
The speech was in truth not one of Netanyahu’s best: the middle section got a little lost in technical detail, and parts of it were too steeped in fear-mongering language and questionable historical join-the-dots lines. Most problematic was that it went into great detail in identifying the crux of the problem, but offered only scant and poorly articulated alternatives to the deal that the Obama administration was said to be close to agreeing with Iran.
Netanyahu had spoken on the subject of Iran in better speeches than the one he gave to Congress on 3 March. It suffered from trying to cater to too broad an audience. It was at various points intended for President Obama, Congress, Americans, Iranians, and Israelis watching back home. Multiple-audience speeches are never easy to write, and the key message sometimes gets lost in the fog of talking across to different groups.
The imagery of the speech was also not as clearly articulated as it should have been. Seemingly, Netanyahu was trying to sell himself as Winston Churchill attacking the appeasement of Hitler during the 1930s. Without saying it directly, President Obama was seen as a modern-day Neville Chamberlain – nice guy, but someone who didn’t understand the pursuit of evil.
The speech was stamped with Netanyahu’s organizational traits and nods to history. Its resemblance in tone and content to his address ‘as a private citizen’ to the House Committee in 2002 revealed a worrying lack of progression in his mindset and also the perceived set of threats facing Israel, and the West in general.
After the usual pleasantries, Netanyahu started by addressing the charge made by his political opponents in Israel and within large parts of the Democratic Party in America (around 50 of whom boycotted the speech) of the political nature of his presence before Congress.
I know that my speech has been the subject of much controversy. I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention.2
As usual, he paused for effect and emphasis. He wanted his audience to absorb his good intentions in coming to Washington. He then moved on to try to defuse the row with President Obama over his speech by paying the President a lengthy tribute:
We appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel. Now, some of that is widely known. like strengthening security cooperation and intelligence sharing, opposing anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.
Some of what the President has done for Israel is less well-known . . . And some of what the President has done for Israel might never be known, because it touches on some of the most sensitive and strategic issues that arise between an American President and an Israeli Prime Minister. But I know it, and I will always be grateful to President Obama for that support.3
His wordy tribute to the President was meant to transmit the meaning that good friends can disagree over things, but this does not diminish the value of the friendship.
Netanyahu turned next to his favourite subject of Jewish history. Just as he had when he presented his government to the Knesset upon his return to power in 2009, he offered a history lesson to the lawmakers. His aim was to link the past to the present and to the future by using a selective narrative that indicated a successful thwarting of an attack against the Jewish people. As he put it:
We’re an ancient people. In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther. We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave for the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies. The plot was foiled. Our people were saved.
Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spews the oldest hatred, the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest technology. He tweets that Israel must be annihilated. You know, in Iran, there isn’t exactly free Internet. But he tweets in English that Israel must be destroyed.
For those who believe that Iran threatens the Jewish state, but not the Jewish people, listen to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, Iran’s chief terrorist proxy. He said: ‘If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of chasing them down around the world.’4
From there Netanyahu broadened out the issue of the Iranian nuclear programme into one that was bigger than simply a problem for the Jews. In doing this, he also introduced the imagery of the Second World War and sought to remind people in an indirect manner about the Holocaust:
But Iran’s regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime was merely a Jewish problem. The 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II. So, too, Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world. To understand just how dangerous Iran would be with nuclear weapons, we must fully understand the nature of the regime.5
He then moved on to offering a short history of modern Iran, which naturally focused on developments from 1979 onwards. In doing so he brought in the historic threat to American interests and lives caused by the Iranian Revolution.
The people of Iran are very talented people. They’re heirs to one of the world’s great civilizations. But in 1979, they were hijacked by religious zealots – religious zealots who imposed on them immediately a dark and brutal dictatorship. That year, the zealots drafted a constitution, a new one for Iran. It directed the revolutionary guards not only to protect Iran’s borders, but also to fulfill the ideological mission of jihad. The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khamenei, exhorted his followers to ‘export the revolution throughout the world.’
Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad. And as states are collapsing across the Middle East, Iran is charging into the void to do just that. Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians.
Backed by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Backed by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world’s oil supply.
Iran took dozens of Americans hostage in Tehran, murdered hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, in Beirut, and was responsible for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Beyond the Middle East, Iran attacks America and its allies through its global terror network. It blew up the Jewish community center and the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. It helped Al Qaida bomb U.S. embassies in Africa. It even attempted to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador, right here in Washington, D.C.
In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations. We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.
Now, two years ago, we were told to give President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif a chance to bring change and moderation to Iran. Some change! Some moderation! Rouhani’s government hangs gays, persecutes Christians, jails journalists and executes even more prisoners than before.
Iran’s regime is as radical as ever, its cries of ‘Death to America,’ that same America that it calls the ‘Great Satan,’ as loud as ever. Now, this shouldn’t be surprising, because the ideology of Iran’s revolutionary regime is deeply rooted in militant Islam, and that’s why this regime will always be an enemy of America.6
The question of a potential rethink of Iran as part of the new strategies that the United States and Europe were considering in their conflict with the Islamic State was then attacked by Netanyahu, who was essentially saying that Iran remained a much greater strategic threat to Western interests than the poorly armed ISIS. He pleaded with Congress not to be fooled into shifting policy towards Iran due to ISIS:
Don’t be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America. Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire.
In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone. So when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.
The difference is that ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. We must always remember – I’ll say it one more time – the greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen.7
After this came the specific attack on the proposed nuclear deal. This was a harder area to execute as the exact details of a deal were not known. The general framework of a deal had been widely published and this provided Netanyahu with his ammunition to make his case for rejecting it. He said:
But that, my friends, is exactly what could happen, if the deal now being negotiated is accepted by Iran. That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them.
So you see, my friends, this deal has two major concessions: one, leaving Iran with a vast nuclear program and two, lifting the restrictions on that program in about a decade. That’s why this deal is so bad. It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb. So why would anyone make this deal? Because they hope that Iran will change for the better in the coming years, or they believe that the alternative to this deal is worse?
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve come here today to tell you we don’t have to bet the security of the world on the hope that Iran will change for the better. We don’t have to gamble with our future and with our children’s future.
In case his audience hadn’t got the message, Netanyahu then returned to using the precedent of the Holocaust in a direct manner implying that he as Prime Minister of Israel would not allow something similar to happen. Reminding Congress of another invited guest who was in the audience, he went on:
With us today is Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Elie, your life and work inspires to give meaning to the words, ‘Never Again.’ And I wish I could promise you, Elie, that the lessons of history have been learned. I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Not to sacrifice the future for the present; not to ignore aggression in the hopes of gaining an illusory peace.
But I can guarantee you this; the days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves.
He wrapped up his speech with a stark reminder that Israel would take action on its own if it were forced to, but preferred to work with the United States to resolve the crisis.
This is why as Prime Minister of Israel, I can promise you one more thing: Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel. I know that you stand with Israel. You stand with Israel because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors.8
As the standing ovation and the applause came to an end, and Netanyahu left Congress after what was arguably the biggest speech of his life, the verdicts and reviews began to roll in. Like it or loathe it, the speech was vintage Netanyahu and encompassed all the facets of his character, his appeal and his problems.
The speech scored well in execution. Madeleine Albrights’s comments from 1998, that she had to pinch herself to remember that Netanyahu wasn’t American, seemed appropriate. Few foreigners could have delivered the speech speaking American – both in terms of language and style of delivery. In this sense, the delivery was reminiscent of President Clinton (Netanyahu had closely studied his oratory during the 1992 American presidential campaign).
Drawing on history was a mechanism that Netanyahu employed to try to give some gravitas and sense of perspective to his message. Comparing the Israeli/Jewish historical narrative to that of the United States was again a smart ploy. Netanyahu liked to talk of mutual and shared interests between Israel and the United States that had been in place for decades. All of this was preaching to the already converted in Congress.
Where the speech became more problematic was in its abject failure to offer any concrete alternative proposals to the deal being negotiated with the Iranians, short of using the war option. This failure was representative of the biggest flaw in ‘Netanyahuism’, the absence of positive counter-proposals.
Netanyahu had become the master politician for defining and articulating the politics of fear. Put simply, he understood the root causes of problems, but had no idea how best to fix them. His speech to Congress, as a result, left many people who watched it with the feeling they had after eating a fast-food meal. Nice while you ate it, probably was not good for you and you soon forgot about it.
President Obama’s response to the speech was cleverly scripted along these lines. His advisors told the President to make it clear that he had been too busy attending to affairs of state to watch the speech on television, but had read a transcript of it. The President was primed for reporters with a seemingly off-the-cuff statement when he appeared at the White House later the same day.
In his comments the President repeatedly focused on the point that Netanyahu offered nothing new in the speech or any alternative proposals. His words read like an attack not only on Netanyahu’s Iranian policy, but on his entire political philosophy. As the President told reporters:
I did have a chance to take a look at the transcript. And as far as I can tell, there was nothing new. The Prime Minister I think appropriately pointed out that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable, and on that point, I thoroughly agree.
He also pointed out that Iran has been a dangerous regime and continues to engage in activities that are contrary to the interest of the United States, to Israel, and to the region. And on that we agree.
He also pointed out the fact that Iran has repeatedly threatened Israel and engaged in the most venomous of anti-Semitic statements, and no one can dispute that.
But on the core issue, which is how do we prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon which would make it far more dangerous and would give it scope for even greater action in the region.
The Prime Minister didn’t offer any viable alternatives. So let’s be clear about what exactly the central concern should be, both for the United States and for Israel. I’ve said since and before I became president that one of my primary goals in foreign policy would be preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and with the help of Congress and our international partners, we constructed an extraordinarily effective sanctions regime that pressured Iran to come to the table to negotiate in a serious fashion.
They have now been negotiating over the last year, and during that period, Iran has, in fact, frozen its program, rolled back some of its most dangerous highly enriched uranium and subjected itself to the kinds of verification and inspections that we had not previously seen. Keep in mind that when we shaped that interim deal, Prime Minister Netanyahu made almost the precise same speech about how dangerous that deal was going to be. And yet, over a year later, even Israeli intelligence officers and in some cases members of the Israeli government have to acknowledge that, in fact, it has kept Iran from further pursuing its nuclear program.
Now, the deal that we are trying to negotiate that is not yet completed would cut off the different pathways for Iran to advance its nuclear capabilities. It would roll back some elements of its program. It would ensure that it did not have what we call a breakout capacity that was shorter than a year’s time. And it would subject Iran to the most vigorous inspections and verification regimes that have ever been put in place.
The alternative that the Prime Minister offers is no deal, in which case Iran will immediately begin once again pursuing its nuclear program, accelerate its nuclear program, without us having any insight into what they’re doing. And without constraint.
And his essential argument is if we just double down on sanctions, Iran won’t want to do that. Well, we have evidence from the past decade that sanctions are not sufficient to prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions. And if, in fact, it does not have some sense that sanctions will not be removed, it will not have an interest in avoiding the path that it’s currently on.
So the bottom line is this. We don’t yet have a deal. It may be that Iran cannot say yes to a good deal. I have repeatedly said that I would rather have no deal than a bad deal. But if we’re successful in negotiating, then, in fact, this will be the best deal possible to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Nothing else comes close. Sanctions won’t do it. Even military action would not be as successful as the deal that we have put forward.
And I think it is very important not to be distracted by the nature of the Iranian regimes’ ambitions when it comes to territory or terrorism. All issues which we share a concern with Israel about and are working consistently with Israel on. Because we know that if, in fact, they obtained a nuclear weapon, all those problems would be worse.
So we’re staying focused on the central issue here. How do we prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? The path that we proposed, if successful, by far is the best way to do that. That’s demonstrable.
And Prime Minister Netanyahu has not offered any kind of viable alternative that would achieve the same verifiable mechanisms to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
So I would urge the members of Congress who were there to continue to express their strong support for Israel’s security, to continue to express their strong interest in providing the assistance Israel needs to repel attacks.
I think it’s important for members of Congress on a bipartisan basis to be unified in pushing back against terrorism in the region and the destabilizing efforts that Iran may have engaged with, with our partners. Those are all things on which this administration and Israel agree.
But when it comes to this nuclear deal, let’s wait until there’s absolutely a deal on the table that Iran has agreed to, at which point everyone can evaluate it. We don’t have to speculate. And what I can guarantee is that if it’s a deal I’ve signed off on, I will be able to prove that it is the best way for us to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And for us to pass up on that potential opportunity would be a grave mistake. It’s not one that I intend to make, and I will take that case to every member of Congress once we actually have a deal.9
Obama delivered his message in a stern, serious and unsmiling manner. His tone was that of a teacher ticking off a student for submitting a piece of work that lacked any originality. Just as Netanyahu had hoped that Mitt Romney would defeat Obama in the 2012 Presidential election, so Obama hoped that Herzog and Livni would unseat Netanyahu in Israel’s elections, two weeks after the speech. President Obama was hoping for a fresh start with a new Prime Minister in Israel with a more sympathetic position towards a potential deal with Iran.
Netanyahu arrived back in Israel to a mixed reception, and with an election campaign that was threatening to inflict a second electoral defeat upon him. The reception of his speech did little to alter the political balance in the country. Polling data, taken in the days following its delivery to Congress, indicated that the Likud had received no significant political bump from it in terms of any major increase in support for the party.10
The speech also had a limited impact on Congress. It pleased those members of Congress who opposed the deal, but did little to convince supporters of the President, or, crucially, those who were undecided.
Great speeches, such as Winston Churchill’s wartime addresses in 1940 and 1941, were beautifully written and delivered with clarity and passion, but most important of all impacted upon policies and events. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was delivered in a clear, and at times, passionate manner, but lacked any impact on events.
The debate over how best to deal with the threat of the Iranian nuclear programme had come a long way since Netanyahu and Obama had assumed office in 2009. From Netanyahu’s perspective, Iran had dominated his foreign policy since coming to power, as well as being an important factor in the formation of his governments.
Defeat at the hands of President Obama over Iran was compensated for by the other key decisive split in US–Israeli relations during the Netanyahu–Obama era, the thorny question of the Palestinian peace process. In this area, Netanyahu was far more successful in resisting pressure from the Obama administration to yield major concessions to the Palestinians.
Both in terms of strategies and tactics, Netanyahu outmanoeuvred Obama on the Palestinian front far more easily than he had been able to do with President Clinton during his first time as Prime Minister between 1996 and 1999. Neither Netanyahu nor Obama formally acknowledged the linkage of the Iranian and Palestinian issues in detail. There were, however, instances when Netanyahu used Israeli restraint on a potential military strike against Iran as a means for buying some relief from the Americans to take the pressure off Israel on the Palestinian front.
The Netanyahu–Obama dance around the Israeli–Palestinian peace process had started in earnest with two speeches in June 2009, one given by Obama in Cairo and the other by Netanyahu in Ramat Gan, Israel. Question marks about Netanyahu’s remarks, and follow-up actions, would dominate the peace process in the subsequent years from 2009 onwards. There was a great deal of speculation as to the extent that Netanyahu had undergone a genuine political transformation.