News Analysis: Netanyahu's U.S. speech underscores major clash of ideals with White House

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech on Tuesday underscores a fundamental and cavernous gap between how he and the White House view troubles in the Middle East and how to solve them.

In a nationally televised speech to U.S. Congress, Netanyahu sounded the alarm for his country's survival, blasting the deal U.S. President Barack Obama is trying to hammer out with Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

"This is a bad deal -- a very bad deal. We're better off without it," he said in the much-discussed speech, adding that the deal will "guarantee" that Iran acquires nuclear weapons, spotlighting the fear of the hawkish Israeli leader and others in his camp for the survival of the Jewish state.

In response to Netanyahu's remarks, Marzieh Afkham, a spokeswoman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said the speech was a "show full of deception" and the sign of "weakness and isolation" of Israeli radicals and their attempts to influence international policies.

The White House, meanwhile, sees things in a less urgent light, which has put Netanyahu at odds with Obama for the past several years, as the two leaders hold fundamentally different world views.

Reacting to the speech, Obama said Netanyahu did not provide any "viable alternative" to the White House's Iran deal, adding that there was nothing new in the prime minister's speech. Some House Democrats called the speech "fear mongering" at its worst.

"Obama's White House takes a liberal view of Middle East security issues in which engaging enemies, negotiating differences and diplomatic agreements take a higher priority than defending the security interests of allies. Prime Minister Netanyahu takes a much more conservative view about the need to protect Israeli security interests," James Phillips, a Middle East expert at Heritage Foundation, told Xinhua.

Experts say those differences are magnified by Israel's contention that the Jewish state would face a greater threat from Iran if Tehran was to obtain nuclear weapons.

Iran says its intentions are peaceful, and that its nuclear program is intended to provide cheap energy. In response to Obama's urging this week that Iran should freeze its nuclear program for a decade, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said: "Obama's stance ... is expressed in unacceptable and threatening phrases ... Iran will not accept excessive and illogical demands."

Phillips said Netanyahu's government believes Obama is naively seeking a flawed nuclear deal with Iran that would jeopardize Israeli national security interests.

Netanyahu believes Obama prematurely relaxed the sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy and caused its currency to plunge. The prime minister also believes Obama's diplomacy is undermining U.S. bargaining leverage, and is setting the bar too low for a deal by departing from UN Security Council resolutions that called on Iran to halt all uranium enrichment, Phillips said.

Dalia Dassa Kaye, director at the RAND Corporation's Center for Middle East Public Policy, noted that Israel insists Iran not have any enrichment capability at all, a position that suggests there is no conceivable deal Israelis would like.

That is because any realistic deal would leave Iran with at least some limited civilian nuclear capability, although that would be restricted and tightly monitored, she said.

However, there are other voices in Israel that back less black-and-white positions, and Netanyahu faces significant domestic pressure for what critics believe is jeopardizing relations with the U.S. over the issue while undermining Israel's ability to shape a final deal, she noted.

If a deal is reached, Israel will not like it but the country is unlikely to take military actions to derail it. Rather, Israel will likely expose what they believe will be Iranian cheating and work with U.S. lawmakers to ensure that sanctions and military options are on the table to enforce Iranian compliance, Kaye said.

To add to the drama, Netanyahu's invitation to the U.S. came from the Republican-led Congress, which arranged the visit without informing the White House, in a break from protocol and to the annoyance of the Obama administration. That led Obama's entire administration to boycott Tuesday's speech, as did at least 50 Democratic lawmakers.

Kaye said that while the security and military relationship between the U.S. and Israel is as strong as it's ever been, there's no question that there is a political crisis in the relationship.

The frustration within the administration toward Netanyahu's positions, both on a potential deal with Iran as well as policies related to the Palestinians, has been brewing for some time.

Still, such crises have been seen in the past, and the relationship is unlikely to be permanently damaged.

Other experts echo1ed those thoughts.

"I think there's a lot of exaggeration," said David Pollock, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, referring to media reports of chilled relations between the two allies. Endi