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 WASHINGTON — When President Obama’s national security adviser sat down with her Israeli counterpart at the White House last week, she upbraided him over leaks in Jerusalem that the Americans interpreted as an attempt to undermine nuclear negotiations with Iran. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The meeting, shielded from the public but fraught with tension, brought home the depth of the frustration between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is a mutual enmity that has only grown in recent days as Mr. Netanyahu prepares to address the Republican-led Congress next week about the dangers of a possible nuclear deal with Iran. 
 
 What started out last month as a dispute over a speech has consumed the two sides ever since, threatening long-term consequences and possibly fracturing America’s tradition of bipartisan support for Israel. The president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, evidently was not mollified by the meeting with Yossi Cohen, her Israeli counterpart, since she said in a television interview on Tuesday night that Mr. Netanyahu’s actions were “destructive” because they were injecting partisanship into the relationship. 
 
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 Her comment came even as Mr. Netanyahu turned down a new invitation to meet separately with Senate Democrats while in Washington, further fueling the partisan flavor of the dispute. For their part, as of Wednesday afternoon, administration officials had not told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a bipartisan pro-Israel lobby, who — if anyone — it was sending to its annual conference in Washington starting Sunday. 
 
 The relationship “has never been so terrible as it is today,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. “Nobody even tries to use any diplomatic words.” 
 
 Eytan Gilboa, an expert on Israeli-American relations at Bar-Ilan University, called Ms. Rice’s comment “unprecedented” and told Israel Radio that it was clear the longstanding bipartisanship that underpinned the alliance “has now been badly broken.” 
 
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 The polarization seems to be growing. J Street, a pro-Israel group more aligned with Mr. Obama’s positions on Iran, is running a full-page ad in Thursday newspapers attacking Mr. Netanyahu for coming to Capitol Hill just two weeks before his own election. “Prime Minister Netanyahu: Congress Isn’t a Prop for Your Election Campaign,” the ad declares. 
 
 On the other side, Republicans were happy to portray Democrats as insufficiently supportive of Israel. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, began selling $35 T-shirts that say “I Stand With Bibi,” using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “Obama and the Democrats refuse to stand with Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu,” her political action committee said in an email to supporters. “Will you?” 
 
 For many Israel supporters, including those at AIPAC who have labored to maintain support across the aisle, the splintering represents a profound danger. AIPAC will try to counter the trend by sending supporters to all 535 congressional offices during its three-day conference. 
 
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 But critics and even some supporters of Mr. Netanyahu were dismayed by his decision to decline an invitation from Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, two of Israel’s strongest Democratic supporters, to meet with Democrats while in town. 
 
 “Since when does an Israeli prime minister say no to a meeting with Democrats?” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. He added: “By the way, their Israeli voting record is impeccable. Not good, not very good, impeccable. The Democrats extend a hand of sorts and he says no? This defies explanation.” 
 
 An Israeli official said Mr. Netanyahu turned down the Democrats because he also declined an invitation to meet separately with congressional Republicans. While he accepted an invitation to address a joint meeting of Congress from Speaker John A. Boehner, a Republican, that was extended on behalf of the Congress as a body and both parties are invited. The partisanship has been created by others, the Israeli official said. 
 
 “It was important to try to keep this as bipartisan as possible,” said the official, who asked not to be named in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “That’s why he rejected both requests he had for meetings from Republicans and Democrats.” Instead, Mr. Netanyahu will focus on the speech to Congress. “From his perspective, it’s the last chance he has to voice the deep concerns he and many others in Israel have as we see this agreement with Iran taking shape.” 
 
 Other efforts by the Israelis to reframe the debate have fallen short. Ron Dermer, the ambassador to Washington and a close ally of Mr. Netanyahu who helped arrange the congressional invitation, emailed Arab ambassadors to encourage them to come to Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to make the point that Arab nations are also worried about a nuclear Iran, the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reported on The Atlantic’s website. At least two envoys, from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, turned him down. 
 
 At a campaign event in Israel on Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu stood firm, ratcheting up his criticism of the developing deal with Iran. Referring to the world powers negotiating with Tehran, he said “it seems they have given up on that commitment” to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. 
 
 “I respect the White House and the president of the United States,” he was quoted as saying. “But on such a critical topic that could determine whether we exist or not, it is my duty to do everything to prevent this great danger to the state of Israel.” 
 
 In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry rejected the criticism. Mr. Netanyahu considered the interim agreement reached with Iran that opened the talks for a longer-term deal as “the worst thing that ever happened,” Mr. Kerry said during a House hearing. “Well guess what? Every aspect of the interim agreement has been complied with.” 
 
 Mr. Kerry also needled Mr. Netanyahu by recalling that the prime minister supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, “and we all know what happened with that decision.” 
 
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 During her meeting last week with Mr. Cohen, the Israeli adviser, Ms. Rice expressed the administration’s pique at leaks by the government in Jerusalem about the Iranian talks, the kinds of leaks she said had not happened in the past. 
 
 To the Americans, it seemed an intentional effort to torpedo the negotiations with one-sided information, and it undercut trust. “We shared with them that this causes us great concern,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Israeli officials have complained that the Americans are freezing them out, which the White House has denied. 
 
 Ms. Rice raised the stakes in her interview with Charlie Rose on PBS on Tuesday night when she said Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to speak to Congress two weeks before Israeli elections has “injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate, I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.” 
 
 With the exception of that one word, she was following the standard script that the White House has used recently. The White House strategy has been to sit back and let Mr. Netanyahu endure the criticism he has generated. White House officials said she was not trying to escalate by using the word “destructive” — no talking points were sent in advance to American officials — but she clearly felt license to say it, and it reflected the lack of any imperative on the part of the White House to try to smooth over the clash. ||||| WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States and Israel showed signs of seeking to defuse tensions on Sunday ahead of a speech in Washington by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu when he will warn against a possible nuclear deal with Iran. 
 
 Policy differences over the negotiations with Iran remained firm, however, as Netanyahu set off for the United States to deliver the speech, which has imperiled ties between the two allies. 
 
 Israel fears that U.S. President Barack Obama’s Iran diplomacy, with an end-of-March deadline for a framework accord, will allow its arch foe to develop atomic weapons — something Tehran denies seeking. 
 
 By accepting an invitation from the Republican party to address Congress on Tuesday, the Israeli leader infuriated the Obama administration, which said it was not told of the speech before plans were made public in an apparent breach of protocol. 
 
 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated Washington’s determination to pursue negotiations with Iran, saying on Sunday the United States deserved “the benefit of the doubt” to see if a nuclear deal could be reached. 
 
 Last week, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, said the partisanship caused by Netanyahu’s looming address was “destructive to the fabric of U.S.-Israeli ties”. 
 
 Asked about this on the ABC program “This Week”, Kerry said “the prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. And we have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history.” 
 
 He said he had talked to Netanyahu on Saturday, adding, “we don’t want to see this turned into some great political football.” Israel and the United States agreed that the main goal was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, he said. 
 
 In remarks on Saturday at Jersualem’s Western Wall, Netanyahu said: “I would like to take this opportunity to say that I respect U.S. President Barack Obama.” He added that he believed in the strong bilateral ties and said, “that strength will prevail over differences of opinion, those in the past and those yet to come.” 
 
 Netanyahu did not repeat those remarks as he departed on Sunday. The Israeli prime minister, who is running for re-election in a March 17 ballot, has framed his visit as being above politics and he portrayed himself as being a guardian for all Jews. 
 
 “I’m going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission,” he said as he boarded his plane in Tel Aviv. “I feel that I am an emissary of all Israel’s citizens, even those who do not agree with me, and of the entire Jewish people,” he told reporters. 
 
 Netanyahu is expected to use his speech to urge Congress to approve new sanctions against Iran despite Obama’s pledge to veto such legislation because it would jeopardize nuclear talks. 
 
 U.S. officials fear he is seeking to sabotage the Iran diplomacy, and critics have suggested his visit is an elaborate election stunt that will play well with voters back home. 
 
 With Obama past the mid-point of his final term, his aides see an Iran nuclear deal as a potential signature achievement for a foreign policy legacy notably short on major successes. 
 
 While White House and Israeli officials insist that key areas of cooperation, from counter-terrorism to intelligence to cyber security, will remain unaffected, the divide over the Iran talks has shaped up as the worst in decades. 
 
 Previously Israel has always been careful to navigate between the Republican and Democratic camps. The planned address, however, has driven a rare wedge between Netanyahu’s government and some congressional Democrats. Some two dozen or more of them plan to boycott the speech, according to unofficial estimates. 
 
 IRANIAN ACCUSATION 
 
 Speaking in Tehran on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Netanyahu of trying to undermine the nuclear talks in order to distract from the Palestinians’ unresolved bid for an independent state. 
 
 “Netanyahu is opposed to any sort of solution,” Zarif said. 
 
 Hard-line U.S. supporters of Israel say Netanyahu must take center-stage in Washington to sound the alarm over the potential Iran deal, even at the risk of offending long-time supporters. 
 
 But a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the “politicized” nature of his visit threatened “what undergirds the strength of the relationship”. 
 
 As one former U.S. official put it: “Sure, when Netanyahu calls the White House, Obama will answer. But how fast will he be about responding (to a crisis)?” 
 
 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu listens as U.S. President Barack Obama (R) speaks, during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington October 1, 2014. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque 
 
 Last month, U.S. officials accused the Israeli government of leaking information to the Israeli media to undermine the Iran negotiations and said this would limit further sharing of sensitive details about the talks. 
 
 “What the prime minister is doing here is simply so egregious that it has a more lasting impact on that fundamental underlying relationship,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group aligned with Obama’s Iran policy. 
 
 Netanyahu will address the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC on Monday. Even as he makes his hard-line case against Iran, he is expected to try to keep tensions from spiraling, mindful that Israelis are wary of becoming estranged from their superpower ally. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Netanyahu described Iran's nuclear programme as a great danger for Israel 
 
 US Secretary of State John Kerry has questioned the judgement of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu over his stance on Iran's nuclear programme. 
 
 Mr Netanyahu has criticised the US and others for "giving up" on trying to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. 
 
 The Israeli PM "may not be correct", Mr Kerry said after attending the latest Iran nuclear talks in Geneva. 
 
 Mr Netanyahu will address Congress next week, after an invitation by Republican leaders criticised by the White House. 
 
 Mr Kerry was reacting to a speech in which Mr Netanyahu had said the US and others were "accepting that Iran will gradually, within a few years, develop capabilities to produce material for many nuclear weapons". 
 
 "I respect the White House and the president of the United States but on such a fateful matter, that can determine whether or not we survive, I must do everything to prevent such a great danger for Israel," he said in a speech in Israel. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Kerry and his Iranian counterpart have been negotiating Iran's nuclear future 
 
 Having just concluded the latest round of nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva, Mr Kerry told senators President Obama had made it clear the policy was not to let Iran get nuclear weapons and Mr Netanyahu's might therefore not be correct. 
 
 The invitation for Mr Netanyahu to speak before Congress has angered Democrats. 
 
 A spokesman for the White House warned against reducing US-Israeli relations to a party-political issue. 
 
 Analysis - Barbara Plett Usher, BBC News, Washington 
 
 Administration officials have been hitting back at Mr Netanyahu's aggressive opposition to the nuclear deal they're negotiating with Iran - they're unhappy his speech to Congress will give him a platform to make his case as talks reach a critical juncture. 
 
 Susan Rice's comments highlight that strain and are the most direct reference by a senior official to the damage caused by the controversy over the visit. It was arranged by Republican congressional leaders without consulting the Democrats or the White House, just two weeks before Mr Netanyahu faces an election. 
 
 That has angered Democrats, some of whom feel they'll be forced to choose between President Obama and their desire not to upset Israel. More than a dozen have said they plan to skip the speech, opening an unprecedented breach in the usual show of bipartisan support for Israel. 
 
 Earlier, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice had gone further and said Mr Netanyahu's visit was "destructive to the fabric of the relationship". 
 
 Mr Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner in what is seen as a rebuke to US President Barack Obama's Iran policy. 
 
 Mr Netanyahu is expected to discuss Iran, as well as Islamist militant groups, in his address. 
 
 The current tensions took root over a decade ago when Iran's nuclear programme first came to light. 
 
 Tough election 
 
 In 2005, Iran was referred to the UN Security Council, leading to a series of sanctions and UN resolutions requiring Tehran to stop enriching uranium. 
 
 The US and other powers - the so-called P5+1 - are negotiating with Iran on its nuclear programme. They want to agree a deal by March this year, but Mr Netanyahu is opposed to any agreement which might allow Tehran to retain the future capacity to build a nuclear weapon. 
 
 The Israeli leader has turned down an invitation to meet Senate Democrats privately, saying this "could compound the misperception of partisanship" surrounding his trip. 
 
 Media Analysis, BBC Monitoring 
 
 Israeli papers are divided over the Obama-Netanyahu spat, with one appearing bemused by the prime minister's stance. 
 
 "The odd, even tragic, thing is that Netanyahu has been doing all he can in recent weeks to help the Iranians achieve their goal," Hemi Shalev writes in Haaretz. 
 
 "First by alienating Obama and the administration, then by provoking the Democratic senators," he adds, referring to Mr Netanyahu's refusal to meet senate democrats separately. 
 
 A commentary in the pro-Netanyahu paper Yisrael Hayom comes out in strong support of the prime minister, saying his Congress speech will be "the last chance to prevent a bad agreement that leaves Iran a threshold nuclear state". 
 
 "The future will prove to what extent Israel was right to be at the forefront of the struggle against the US administration," Haim Shain writes. 
 
 In Yedioth Ahronoth, Guy Bechur dismisses fears of a deeper rupture between the US and Israel, and quotes a Gallop poll in the US as suggesting that 70% of Americans "support or very much support Israel". 
 
 Several Democratic members of Congress including Vice-President Joe Biden have said they will not attend the speech. 
 
 Republican leaders did not consult the Obama administration before inviting Mr Netanyahu, which the White House has called a breach of protocol. 
 
 White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Wednesday: "The president has said the relationship between the US and Israel can't just be reduced to a relationship between the Republican party and the Likud party." 
 
 Mr Obama does not plan to meet Mr Netanyahu next week. The White House cited the "long-standing practice" of not meeting government leaders close to elections, which Israel will hold in mid-March. 
 
 Mr Netanyahu is fighting a tough election against the Labour Party's Yitzhak Herzog, who has focused on the prime minister's cooler relations with Mr Obama. ||||| Gay ex-ballplayer has the perfect response to Christian player’s criticism of his ‘lifestyle’ 
 
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 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington DC, on March 2, 2015 (AFP) 
 
 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for another round in an increasingly heated battle with the White House over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 
 
 In a landmark speech to Congress, Netanyahu will seek to mobilise lawmakers to oppose an emerging deal with Tehran which is backed by President Barack Obama. 
 
 Obama on Monday lashed out at his nemesis, pointing to Netanyahu’s attacks on a previous interim US-Iran deal that paved the way for this week’s ongoing talks in Switzerland. 
 
 “Netanyahu made all sorts of claims,” he told Reuters. 
 
 “This was going to be a terrible deal,” he went on. “This was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief. Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true.” 
 
 Netanyahu aides say that in his address he will present information proving that the shape of the deal being discussed in Switzerland this week presents grave danger. 
 
 State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf warned Monday that if the details came from US briefings to Israel, revealing them could mean there would be no more. 
 
 “We’ve continuously provided detailed classified briefings to Israeli officials to keep them updated and to provide context,” she said. 
 
 “Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust.” 
 
 “We want to keep talking in these settings, of course, but that would be a problem.” 
 
 Netanyahu believes that in the talks with Iran the so-called P5+1 group is verging on striking a deal that will ease international sanctions without the ironclad safeguards the Jewish state says are essential to deny Tehran a nuclear bomb. 
 
 The US administration says that is just not true. 
 
 “This president has made clear that he’s not going to sign a bad deal,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. 
 
 - Power: No nuclear arms for Iran - 
 
 Samantha Power, Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations, weighed into the fight on Monday when she addressed 16,000 pro-Israel activists in the US capital. 
 
 “The United States of America will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, period,” she said. Taking the podium shortly after Power, Netanyahu remained unswerving in his opposition to Obama’s policy. 
 
 “The purpose of my address to Congress tomorrow is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel,” he said. 
 
 “My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama,” he told the lobby group AIPAC’s annual conference. 
 
 “Israel and the United States agree that Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons. But we disagree on the best way to prevent them from developing those weapons.” 
 
 The row is not only about the core issues but also about the way Netanyahu and US Republicans are waging the battle. 
 
 He was invited by Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican, and he accepted with neither party informing the White House. 
 
 Netanyahu himself is running for a third consecutive term — which would be a fourth overall — in an Israeli election on March 17. 
 
 “Our commitments to our partnership with Israel are bedrock commitments rooted in shared fundamental values cemented through decades of bipartisan reinforcement,” Power said. 
 
 “This partnership should never be politicised.” 
 
 The Israeli leader’s lobbying expedition to Washington came as US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Switzerland for talks with his Iranian counterpart on what would be an historic deal. 
 
 But Netanyahu denied that his action had harmed the traditionally close US-Israeli alliance. 
 
 “Reports of the demise of the Israeli-US relations are not only premature, they’re just wrong.” 
 
 Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met in a lakeside hotel for a series of sessions which are scheduled to stretch into Wednesday afternoon. 
 
 The pace of the negotiations meant to rein in Iran’s suspected nuclear arms program in exchange for sanctions relief has gathered pace as a March 31 deadline nears. 
 
 Mark Heller, a political analyst at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies says that after years of warning about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, it is hard to imagine what new angle Netanyahu will pursue on Tuesday. 
 
 “He’s been over this ground before many times and expectations have been built up to the point where if he doesn’t come up with something truly explosive, it’s going to be a big let down,” he told AFP. 
 
 “I think he’s going to have to pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat and reveal some information that’s not out there in the public domain; otherwise he’ll just be preaching to the converted.” ||||| WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most contentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike. As a result, he said, the administration has no “moral right” to restrain Israel from taking military action of its own. 
 
 Mr. Netanyahu’s unusually harsh public comments about Israel’s most important ally, which closely track what he has reportedly said in vivid terms to American officials visiting Jerusalem, laid bare the tension between him and President Obama over how to handle Iran. They also suggested that he is willing to use the pressure of the presidential election to try to force Mr. Obama to commit to attack Iran under certain conditions. 
 
 He appeared to be responding to a weekend statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States was “not setting deadlines” beyond which it would turn to a military solution. 
 
 Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem, said, “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” 
 
 In another sign of tensions, the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Tuesday that the Obama administration had declined a request from Mr. Netanyahu’s office for a meeting with Mr. Obama when the Israeli leader attends the United Nations General Assembly this month. The Obama administration said the decision was due to a scheduling problem and had been conveyed to Israel long ago. 
 
 On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama called Mr. Netanyahu to try to calm the situation. The two talked for a full hour, hashing through the Iran confrontation and their misunderstandings. 
 
 “President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed that they are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and agreed to continue their close consultations going forward,” the White House said in a statement after the phone call. 
 
 The White House also tried to tamp down controversy over the request for a meeting, saying that after a possible New York encounter was ruled out, Mr. Netanyahu did not request a meeting in Washington. “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,” the statement said. 
 
 The United States says it has no evidence that Iranian leaders have made a final decision to build a bomb. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report says the country has amassed a stockpile of low- and medium-enriched uranium that, with further enrichment, could fuel as many as six nuclear weapons. 
 
 The United States concluded several years ago that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons development program at the end of 2003, though there has been evidence of sporadic work since. The Israelis say Iran is quietly reconstituting a much larger effort. 
 
 In demanding that Mr. Obama effectively issue an ultimatum to Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to be making maximum use of his political leverage at a time when Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has sought to make an issue of what Mr. Romney says is the administration’s lack of support for Israel. 
 
 It is not clear what level of development in Iran’s nuclear program would constitute a “red line” in Israeli eyes. Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a research institute, and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview last week, “It is very important to draw a line about the quantities of enriched uranium and the levels of enrichment.” 
 
 One option that has been widely discussed among experts advising the United States government is capping Iran’s uranium enrichment at a reactor-grade level. Also, Iran would be permitted to stockpile no more than 1,764 pounds of that uranium, less than is required, if further enriched, to make a single bomb. ||||| WASHINGTON — American negotiators, heading into a crucial round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program next week in Baghdad, are allowing themselves a rare emotion after more than a decade of fruitless haggling with Tehran: hope. 
 
 With signs that Iran is under more pressure than it has been in years to make a deal, senior Obama administration officials said the United States and five other major powers were prepared to offer a package of inducements to obtain a verifiable agreement to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium closer to weapons grade. 
 
 These gestures, the officials said, could include easing restrictions on things like airplane parts and technical assistance to Iran’s energy industry, but not the sweeping sanctions on oil exports, which officials said would go into effect on schedule in July. 
 
 The oil sanctions, which the Iranians are seeking desperately to avoid, are one of several factors that American officials believe may make Tehran more amenable to exploring a diplomatic solution. In addition, the recent decline in oil prices has magnified the pain of the existing sanctions on Iran; a new government coalition in Israel has strengthened the hand of its hawkish leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and Americans believe that recent blustery statements from Iranian officials are laying the groundwork for concessions by Tehran. 
 
 None of this guarantees success. Several officials played down the prospect of a major breakthrough from the meeting on Wednesday, which will include Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, in addition to the United States. Mr. Netanyahu on Friday repeated his skepticism that there would be any progress. 
 
 But American officials said that at a minimum, the Baghdad meeting should be a genuine test of Iran’s willingness to do more than talk. “They’re nervous enough to talk,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the negotiations. “Whether they’re nervous enough to act, we don’t know yet.” Another senior official said, “We have a tail wind going into this.” 
 
 For President Obama, the stakes are huge. A successful meeting could prolong the diplomatic dance with Tehran, delaying any possible military confrontation over the nuclear program until after the presidential election. It could also keep a lid on oil prices, which fell again this week in part because of the decrease in tensions. Lower gasoline prices would aid the economic recovery in the United States, and Mr. Obama’s electoral prospects. 
 
 In a sign of the increased diplomatic efforts, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that its director general, Yukiya Amano, would travel to Tehran on Sunday to try to negotiate access to a military site where Iran is suspected of having conducted tests on nuclear-weapons triggers. It would be the first visit by the agency’s head to Iran since 2009, and it could add to the momentum in Baghdad. 
 
 “The Iranians are in the position of needing to pursue diplomacy, if anything, even more than they did before,” said Dennis B. Ross, one of Mr. Obama’s senior advisers on Iran until last year and now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It’s not like they have any other good news right now.” 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Ross said, Iran’s recent statements signal that its leaders are preparing their domestic audience for concessions. Iranian officials have declared that the West has effectively endorsed Iran’s right to enrich uranium, a step they portrayed as a major strategic coup. American officials insist the United States has not done that and has been deliberately ambiguous about whether it would ever grant Iran the right to enrichment. 
 
 Still, as Mr. Ross said, “if you’re looking for a way to present a compromise, you want to present it as a victory.” 
 
 Like other experts, he added a cautionary note. After an initial meeting in Istanbul last month that served mainly to test if Iran was willing to talk seriously about its nuclear program, the United States and its partners must now get into the kinds of nitty-gritty issues that torpedoed previous negotiations with Iran. 
 
 The major powers’ initial goal is to halt the activity that most alarms Israel: the spinning of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity, which is within striking distance of the level needed to fuel a nuclear weapon. That would buy time for negotiations over the ultimate fate of a program that Iran claims is for peaceful energy purposes, but that the United States and Israel fear is in pursuit of at least a nuclear weapons capability. 
 
 In addition to halting enrichment, officials said, Iran must agree to ship out its stockpiles of 20 percent uranium and to cease operations at an enrichment facility buried in a mountainside near the holy city of Qum, which Israel says could soon be impregnable to an airstrike. 
 
 If Iran agrees to those interim steps, officials said, the talks could shift from high-profile meetings once a month to more regular meetings, at working levels, where officials could delve into technical details, like how to ship out the uranium or monitor Iran’s suspension of operations at the plant near Qum, known as Fordo. European Union and Iranian officials have already met in Geneva to prepare the agenda for the meeting in Baghdad. 
 
 “You could really use the summer to have weekly, if not daily, meetings to get to the point where the U.S. could say, ‘We think there is a deal out there to avoid war,’ ” said R. Nicholas Burns, who led talks with Iran under President George W. Bush and is now a professor at Harvard. But, he added, the Obama administration “has also got to be willing to walk away from it.” 
 
 On Tuesday, the American ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, sought to reassure an Israeli audience that the United States not only was willing to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but had made preparations to do so. And Mr. Netanyahu’s public position on the negotiations has remain unchanged, while his ability to order military action may actually be enhanced by his new, broader coalition, analysts said. 
 
 In his comments on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu reiterated his demand that Iran cease all enrichment, even to 3.5 percent purity; ship out all stockpiles of enriched uranium; and dismantle, rather than simply switch off, the Fordo facility. “When this goal is achieved, I will be the first to applaud,” he said during a visit to Prague. “Until then, count me among the skeptics.” 
 
 Analysts said it was hard to gauge what kinds of concessions from the Western nations, Russia and China would draw a positive response from Iran, beyond lifting the oil embargo. European officials have suggested that the European Union could suspend a ban on insuring oil tankers that has had a far swifter effect on Iran’s sales elsewhere in the world than originally intended. 
 
 The major powers, officials said, are also likely to offer a variation on an earlier proposal to enrich uranium removed from Iran and ship it back into the country for use in medical research.
– Over the next two days, Washington will be a study in contrasts. Today, President Obama and two key advisers will push for a diplomatic means of avoiding a nuclear Iran; tomorrow, in a controversial speech to Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will push back against the plan, the New York Times reports. To set the scene: Netanyahu left Tel Aviv yesterday for what he called "a fateful, even historic, mission" for which he is "an emissary of all Israel's citizens, even those who do not agree with me, and of the entire Jewish people," Reuters reports. His speech will likely call for boosted sanctions against Iran, but Obama has suggested he would veto any bill giving Congress a chance to legislate on the matter. This weekend, Netanyahu offered conciliatory words, saying he "respected" Obama and that "strength will prevail over differences of opinion." Obama will meet Reuters for an interview this afternoon, while National Security Adviser Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power speak to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group Netanyahu will also address, the Times reports. The paper sees the meetings as a chance for the administration to reaffirm its support for Israel. Indeed, John Kerry yesterday noted on ABC's This Week that Netanyahu "is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. And we have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history," Reuters reports. Kerry tomorrow will join international officials in Switzerland as they look to outline an Iranian deal by the month's end, the Washington Post reports. Kerry has been working closely—too closely, according to some Iranian lawmakers—with Iran's foreign minister to hammer out a deal, the Times reports. "He has made a huge investment of his time and energy in the talks, and his personal, hands-on involvement in recent months has been crucial to building momentum toward a deal," says an analyst. But some worry that Iran could read Kerry's "eagerness" as an opening to seek more concessions. Meanwhile, the UN's nuclear agency says Iran is coming up short on providing essential information, Reuters reports. "The (IAEA) is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," the agency's chief says.