Axios: A video of Netanyahu ignites the anger of the White House
The White House canceled a US-Israeli meeting on Iran scheduled for Thursday, according to Axios website.
US and Israeli officials said the decision came in protest of a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the supply of US weapons to the Israeli army.
The sources indicated that President Joe Biden’s top advisers were outraged by the video, and the White House decided to cancel the meeting, which was scheduled for Thursday.
For his part, the US official said that the decision shows that there are consequences for such actions, while the Israeli official stressed that “the Americans are angry, and the video of Bibi (Netanyahu) has caused serious damage”.
According to Axios, some Israeli officials were already on their way to Washington when the meeting was canceled.
Although US officials confirmed that the meeting was cancelled as a US message about the video, a third claimed the postponement was due to an organizational problem.
Netanyahu had criticized the Biden administration in a video and stated that it was unreasonable for Washington to withhold weapons and ammunition from Israel over the past months.
The White House expressed shock, and press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre noted that only one shipment of weapons has been stopped since the war began on October 7, while billions of dollars in weapons have flowed unhindered.
Privately, Biden’s team was angry and shocked by Netanyahu’s ingratitude, according to one US official.
On his return from Beirut, Biden’s adviser, Amos Hochstein, met on Tuesday with the Israeli prime minister, and as soon as he entered the meeting venue, he told Netanyahu that the accusations in the video were inaccurate and illegal, according to Israeli officials.
The strategic dialogue on Iran was scheduled to take place between the two sides, with the participation of officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies, along with their Israeli counterparts.
Although the meeting was canceled, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet his Israeli counterpart Tzachi Hanegbi, who has already left for the United States.
Relations between the Biden and Netanyahu teams are more tense than at any time in the eight months since the war on Gaza began.
It’s noteworthy that this is the second time that a meeting of the strategic dialogue on Iran, at the last minute, between the Israeli and the US sides, was canceled.
