The global scale of
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address in front of Congress Tuesday was made possible by President Barack Obama despite his disagreement with the speech itself, according to one expert.
Dan Senor, a co-founder of Foreign Policy Initiative, told the hosts on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Wednesday that Obama actually "elevated" the profile of the speech that centered on the threat Iran poses to Israel and the rest of the world.
"I think the president and the White House completely ham-handed the lead-up to the Netanyahu speech," Senor said. "In other words, if I were advising him, I would have said, 'Ignore it. Minimize it.' Instead, Obama says that [Vice President Joe] Biden's not going to attend, [Secretary of State John] Kerry's not going to attend. I think they were hoping to intimidate Netanyahu into pulling out.
"He completely elevated it. He elevated it. I've been to two previous Netanyahu addresses to Congress, in 2011 and 1996. No one has paid attention. This one, the world was watching. And there's one person to thank, and his name is President Obama."
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Senor, who said has has visited Israel "about every other quarter … for about 30 years," is an expert on Middle East affairs. He said Obama was trying to "intimidate" the Israeli prime minister into canceling the speech, which came via an invite from Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
"Obama was gonna do everything he could to personalize this and hopefully try to intimidate Netanyahu from coming," Senor said.
Netanyahu spoke about an impending deal the United States and other nations are about to strike with Iran over that country's nuclear program. Iran has threatened to attack Israel several times over the years,
threats Netanyahu has not taken lightly.
Israel, however, has been mostly kept in the dark regarding the secret talks with Iran. Netanyahu believes the deal in the works is a bad one.
"Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly said that no deal is better than a bad deal," Senor said. "He recognized, like the Israeli leadership and like many throughout the west, that cutting a bad deal was actually a worse scenario than no deal at all. So what the prime minster tried to do yesterday was just lay out why this was a bad deal.
"What the prime minister said yesterday, basically, if you read between the lines, is 'I would prefer no negotiations right now. But it doesn't mean that I'm opposed to any negotiated outcome.' Any negotiated deal at a minimum should require that before the restrictions are lifted over the next decade, Iran has to change its behavior in terms of its threats to its neighbors, these countries it's 'gobbling up' … and it must end its threats of an annihilation of Israel.
"If their behavior is not gonna change, how can you lift the restrictions? So he's not saying no, he's saying it's gotta be a deal with teeth."
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