U.S. President Barack Obama speaks next to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, February 27, 2015. 
 
 WASHINGTON President Barack Obama would veto a bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate allowing Congress to weigh in on any deal the United States and other negotiating countries reach with Iran on its nuclear capabilities, the White House said on Saturday. 
 
 "The president has been clear that now is not the time for Congress to pass additional legislation on Iran. If this bill is sent to the president, he will veto it," said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council. 
 
 The United States and five other major powers are seeking to negotiate an agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. 
 
 The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act would require to submit to Congress the text of any agreement within five days of concluding a final deal with Iran. The bill would also prohibit Obama from suspending or waiving sanctions on Iran passed by Congress for 60 days after a deal. 
 
 Meehan said United States "should give our negotiators the best chance of success, rather than complicating their efforts." 
 
 Negotiations between the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, Britain and Iran have reached a crucial stage, with a basic framework agreement due by the end of March. 
 
 Republican Senator Bob Corker, one of the bipartisan group of sponsors of the bill, said it was "disappointing that the president feels he is the only one who speaks for the citizens of our country." 
 
 (Reporting By Julia Edwards and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Steve Orlofsky) ||||| 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. ||||| VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said on Monday Iran was being slow to cooperate with his agency’s investigation into the Iranian atomic program and that the inquiry could not continue indefinitely. 
 
 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano waits for the start of a board of governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna March 2, 2015. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader 
 
 Diplomats have voiced doubt over whether the outstanding issues in the U.N. investigation would be resolved before a broader diplomatic agreement is reached between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany. 
 
 The seven countries have set a deadline of late March for a framework deal and June for a comprehensive final settlement that would curb Iran’s nuclear activity to ensure it cannot be put to bombmaking in return for the lifting of international sanctions that have hammered the oil-based Iranian economy. 
 
 When asked about a time frame for the U.N. inquiry running parallel to the higher-level negotiations, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said: “It depends on the level and pace of cooperation from Iran, I cannot tell by when... 
 
 “We have asked questions and the questions are clear, so (Iran) can answer.” 
 
 The Islamic Republic has yet to address two outstanding issues relating to alleged explosives tests and other measures that might have been used for nuclear bomb research which it should have explained away by last August. 
 
 The West fears Iran wants to develop atomic bomb capability. Tehran says its program is for peaceful nuclear energy only. 
 
 The IAEA remains ready to accelerate the resolution of all outstanding issues, Amano added, but “this process cannot continue indefinitely”. Iran’s leading negotiator Abbas Araqchi met with Amano last week, promising swifter cooperation, but neither side has spelled out any details. 
 
 Iran wants Western countries to swiftly lift crippling economic sanctions in any deal curbing its nuclear program - one of the sticking points in high-level negotiations continuing in Switzerland this week. 
 
 The IAEA is likely to monitor the implementation of any deal between Iran and the six powers. Amano said he proposed a 1.8-percent increase to the body’s 344-million-euro ($386 million) budget given increased demand for its services. 
 
 He reiterated deep concern about the nuclear activities of North Korea, which quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993. The IAEA has not had inspectors on the ground there since they were expelled by North Korea in 2009. 
 
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 WASHINGTON — President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel offered radically divergent approaches to the perils of a nuclear-armed Iran on Monday even as they tried to cool down the personal nature of a long-distance dispute that has inflamed relations between the United States and Israel for more than a month. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 On the eve of Mr. Netanyahu’s hotly debated address to Congress, the two leaders separately disclaimed personal animosity while laying out what amounts to the biggest policy schism between the two countries in years. Mr. Obama defended his diplomatic efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran while Mr. Netanyahu presented them as dangerously naïve. 
 
 “I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there is still time to avert them,” Mr. Netanyahu told thousands of Israel supporters in Washington. “For 2,000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless.” He added: “Today, we are no longer silent. Today, we have a voice. And tomorrow, as prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, I plan to use that voice” 
 
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 In an interview a few hours later, Mr. Obama said that he and Mr. Netanyahu had a “substantial disagreement” over how to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But he suggested that Mr. Netanyahu was an alarmist, saying that the Israeli leader had been unduly skeptical of a preliminary accord intended to slow the Iranian nuclear program during negotiations aimed at a longer-term resolution. 
 
 “Netanyahu made all sorts of claims — this was going to be a terrible deal, this was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief, Iran would not abide by the agreement,” Mr. Obama told the Reuters news agency. “None of that has come true.” 
 
 Mr. Obama said that any deal would have to ensure that Iran was not capable of building a nuclear weapon in less than a year, and that the agreement must stand for at least 10 years. “If they do agree to it,” he said, “it would be far more effective in controlling their nuclear program than any military action we could take, any military action Israel could take, and far more effective than sanctions will be.” 
 
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 Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, coming just two weeks before Israeli elections and three weeks before a deadline in the Iran talks, has polarized politicians in both countries. The prime minister’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday — arranged by Speaker John A. Boehner without consulting the White House — immediately took on a partisan flavor, and Mr. Obama refused to meet with Mr. Netanyahu because his visit comes so close to the Israeli elections. 
 
 Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and more than 50 Democratic lawmakers plan to skip Mr. Netanyahu’s speech. While the White House has not publicly encouraged a boycott, it sent an email late Monday inviting House Democratic aides to a trade meeting at the White House on Tuesday at a time that would make it hard for them to attend the speech. Advocates on both sides have published incendiary newspaper ads in recent days, including one attacking Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser. 
 
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 The president expressed grievance about the speaking invitation, which the White House has interpreted as a way of bashing Mr. Obama and undercutting the Iran talks. In the Reuters interview, Mr. Obama said it would be as if Democrats in Congress invited the French president to speak after opposing President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. “I guarantee you that some of the same commentators who are cheerleading now would have suggested that it was the wrong thing to do,” he said. 
 
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 But the president and his team also seemed intent on tamping down the intensity of the dispute. Secretary of State John Kerry, in Geneva for more talks with Iran, made a point of defending Israel before the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday. And Mr. Obama sent Ms. Rice and Samantha Power, his ambassador to the United Nations, to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington. 
 
 “This is not a personal issue,” Mr. Obama said. “I think that it is important for every country in its relationship with the United States to recognize that the U.S. has a process of making policy.” Even though Ms. Rice said last week that the issue could be “destructive” to bipartisan support of Israel, Mr. Obama said Monday that it was a distraction and would not be “permanently destructive.” 
 
 Mr. Netanyahu, appearing before an estimated 16,000 supporters of Israel at the Aipac conference, characterized the disagreement over Iran as a “family” fight that would ultimately be overcome, and he expressed gratitude to Mr. Obama for his support of Israel over the years. 
 
 “My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the esteemed office that he holds,” Mr. Netanyahu told the crowd, which greeted him with standing ovations. “I have great respect for both.” 
 
 He said he was sorry if anyone interpreted his visit as a political shot at Mr. Obama. “The last thing anyone who cares about Israel, the last thing that I would want, is for Israel to become a partisan issue,” he said, “and I regret that some people have misperceived my visit here this week as doing that. Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. Israel should always remain a bipartisan issue.” 
 
 But he emphasized that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran looked different from Jerusalem than it does from Washington. “American leaders worry about the security of their country,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.” 
 
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 Some supporters said they hoped Mr. Netanyahu’s measured language might defuse some of the anger of recent weeks. “I think he did well and lowered the temperature,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who had called on Mr. Netanyahu to cancel the speech because of the fallout. “He could have pepped them up. He did not. It was an important message.” 
 
 Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu said he had done lasting harm. “I’m here to do damage control,” said Erel Margalit, a Labor member of Parliament who attended the Aipac conference. “I’m here to say we, too, are very concerned about Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state, but we’re interested in getting the discussions back to where they were.” 
 
 Republicans maintained that it was Mr. Obama who had done the damage by making a fuss over a speech rather than paying attention to the substance of Mr. Netanyahu’s message. “The address is an opportunity for you to hear from the leader of one of our closest allies about the grave threats we face from radical Islam and Iran,” Mr. Boehner’s office said in an email. 
 
 The tension of the moment was reflected at the Aipac conference before Ms. Power’s speech, when the audience was advised to “treat all our speakers as guests in our home.” Ms. Power and Ms. Rice both used their speeches to reaffirm Mr. Obama’s support for Israel and his determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. 
 
 But Ms. Rice encountered skepticism when she laid out the argument for a possible deal, with the audience applauding the goal of barring Iran from nuclear enrichment altogether even as she called that unrealistic. “Sound bites won’t stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Ms. Rice said. “Strong diplomacy backed by pressure can.” ||||| An agreement on Iran’s nuclear program would be a momentous event in American-Iranian relations, and one that White House officials insist is the best hope for constraining Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and easing decades of animosity between Iran and the United States. But critics fear a deal will merely defer the day when Iran becomes a nuclear weapons state, while prompting Arab nations to consider developing their own nuclear deterrent. 
 
 An accord could also be a major accomplishment for Mr. Kerry, 71, who has logged more than 309 travel days in the past two years, but whose major achievement to date is an agreement that required President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to give up his chemical arms — and left him ensconced in Damascus while the casualty toll from the conflict has continued to soar. Mr. Kerry’s intensive pursuit of a Middle East peace agreement ended in bitter recriminations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and he has little to show for his push to end the civil war in Syria. 
 
 In Ukraine, it is the Germans and French who have the lead: No American officials were present when a shaky cease-fire was reached in talks with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month, and which Russia-backed separatists ignored by taking the town of Debaltseve. 
 
 Mr. Kerry’s relationship with Mr. Zarif is not unique. Mr. Kerry has invested heavily in his relationships with other foreign figures, such as Mr. Netanyahu and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, even when the payoff has not always been obvious. 
 
 But Mr. Kerry clearly sees Mr. Zarif as a promising interlocutor at a time when conditions for a deal are better than they have been in years. Plummeting oil prices, economic sanctions and the Obama administration’s willingness to allow Iran to retain a limited capability to enrich uranium have provided Tehran with an incentive to negotiate. 
 
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 Mr. Kerry’s diplomatic efforts with Mr. Zarif began at the United Nations in September 2013, when an introductory meeting scheduled for five minutes lasted for half an hour and ended with the diplomats exchanging email addresses and phone numbers. 
 
 The relationship, however, has not always been harmonious. There were angry voices in a meeting in Muscat, Oman, last November, when the American side became frustrated by Mr. Zarif’s reluctance — or inability, given his tight negotiating instructions — to make important concessions. When the two sides were unable to surmount their differences later that month in Vienna, Mr. Kerry proclaimed that they had been brainstorming about new ideas and would seek a framework agreement by the end of March. 
 
 In recent months, the pace, intensity and stakes of the talks have increased. After Mr. Zarif was criticized by the Iranian lawmakers for his stroll with Mr. Kerry in Geneva, he appeared to be taking no chances when the two sides reconvened in Munich in February and photographers were not permitted to record the traditional handshake and greetings at the start of the session. 
 
 In an apparent effort to demonstrate his toughness to his Iranian critics, Mr. Zarif also told Iran’s state-controlled media that he had been instructed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to stop shouting at Mr. Kerry. 
 
 At the last round of talks, however, the two sides appeared to get down to business. As that negotiating session approached, the Iranians informed the United States that Mr. Zarif would be accompanied in Geneva by Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, who also served as foreign minister under Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That prompted the United States to include Ernest J. Moniz, the secretary of energy, in the talks. 
 
 Mr. Salehi and Mr. Moniz are also expected to be at the Montreux negotiations with the two foreign ministers. 
 
 In the meantime, Mr. Kerry’s laserlike focus on getting an accord has unnerved Israel and prompted concerns in Saudi Arabia and other Arab foes of Tehran, anxieties Mr. Kerry is trying to quell even before an agreement has been forged. 
 
 Mr. Kerry talked to Mr. Netanyahu by phone on Saturday, and discussed the Iran negotiations, the prime minister’s visit to Washington and the United States’ concern about the financial plight of the Palestinian Authority, even after criticizing him in public. (Mr. Kerry recently told Congress that the Israeli prime minister’s support for the George W. Bush administration’s effort to topple Saddam Hussein showed his judgment could not always been trusted. Mr. Kerry did not mention that he himself voted for a 2002 Senate resolution authorizing military action against Iraq if diplomatic efforts to eliminate its suspected weapons of mass destruction failed.) 
 
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 Mr. Kerry has also made plans to try to ease Arab anxieties about the potential accord with Iran. After leaving Montreux, Mr. Kerry plans to head to Riyadh to meet on Thursday with the new Saudi king, Salman. His next step will be London, where he will meet with foreign ministers from Arab nations in the Persian Gulf. 
 
 A European diplomat whose country is participating in the negotiations with Iran questioned last week whether Mr. Kerry was too involved. “You want to bring in the secretary of state at the end, to resolve the last differences, as a closer,” said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. “He should not be involved in the day-to-day technical negotiations.” 
 
 The Obama administration has sent Mr. Moniz and a team of experts to work on the technical issues with their Iranian counterparts in Montreux. But the next few weeks are expected to see a series of marathon meetings between the two foreign ministers, and with a deadline fast approaching, nobody is expecting Mr. Kerry to hold back now. ||||| Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visits Jerusalem's holy Western Wall hours ahead of trip to Washington where he is expected to deliver controversial Congress speech on Iran. (Reuters) 
 
 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visits Jerusalem's holy Western Wall hours ahead of trip to Washington where he is expected to deliver controversial Congress speech on Iran. (Reuters) 
 
 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to a joint meeting of Congress will probably be the most important speech of his career — and one that has already jeopardized relations between Israel and the United States. 
 
 On Tuesday morning, Netanyahu will confront an American president and insist that the future of the State of Israel, and the world, is imperiled by a pending “bad deal” with Iran on its nuclear program. 
 
 Also hanging in the balance is Netanyahu’s own political future. Just two weeks after the speech, Netanyahu will either be reelected to a historic fourth term as prime minister or be out of a job. 
 
 Netanyahu has spent three terms as Israeli prime minister focused on the dangers posed by Iran. In his first address to Congress in 1996, he warned that an atomic Iran would “presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.” 
 
 His supporters call him prescient; his detractors say Netanyahu has been warning for 20 years that “time is running out” on the Iran threat. His critics say Netanyahu is a broken record, a Cassandra obsessed, willing to deeply damage U.S.-Israeli relations in a futile confrontation with the United States that wins Israel nothing. 
 
 His opponents in Israel and the United States say the speech is mostly a cynical ploy to get reelected in a tight March 17 vote, by fear-mongering on Iran and by opposing an American president who is not very popular in Israel. 
 
 On Tuesday morning, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry meets with his counterparts in Switzerland to try to complete a framework accord with Iran by the end of March, Netanyahu will stand at the lectern in Congress to tell Americans, essentially, that President Obama is either foolhardy or weak and about to sign a deal with the devil. 
 
 Netanyahu will warn, as he has in the past, that the Americans are gambling on a radical Iranian regime run by Muslim clerics who deny the Holocaust, sponsor terrorist groups, support a murderous regime in Syria and pledge to destroy Israel. 
 
 As his chartered plane wings toward Washington on Sunday afternoon, Netanyahu’s advisers say the final author of the speech will be Netanyahu himself. 
 
 The prime minister’s press office released photographs of Netanyahu penning his speech in longhand. 
 
 Netanyahu will write the speech because he considers himself not only an authority on the minutiae of the Iran nuclear program — the number, type and productivity of the centrifuges and the estimates of low-enriched uranium to the kilogram — but also an expert on U.S. politics and the American people. 
 
 Netanyahu studied at MIT and served as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in New York. He has been called the “most American” of Israeli prime ministers. 
 
 This is his moment. Netanyahu’s English is fluid, conversational, persuasive and often blunt. He has a flair for stagecraft. His guiding light, says his inner circle, is Britain’s wartime premier and great orator, Winston Churchill, who is the only other foreign leader to have addressed a joint meeting of Congress three times. 
 
 During Netanyahu’s second speech to Congress in May 2009, he received 29 standing ovations. 
 
 Netanyahu’s critics in Israel and in the Obama administration warn that the Israeli leader is really no Churchill and that he has seriously miscalculated this time. 
 
 Israeli relations with Democrats and the Obama administration are at a historic low. 
 
 A top Israeli diplomat said that Netanyahu, if reelected, has already written off his relations with Obama in his last two years in the White House, a potentially perilous gambit for a Middle East leader surrounded by enemies. 
 
 National security adviser Susan E. Rice on Tuesday denounced the upcoming address as “destructive” to the relationship between the United States and Israel. 
 
 A senior U.S. official said Friday that the strategy is to stand aside and let Netanyahu give his speech, which will neither derail Iran talks nor sway Congress to block a possible agreement. 
 
 The senior official, who agreed to present administration views in exchange for anonymity, said the speech is more about Netanyahu’s reelection bid and his preoccupation with Iran — a clear and present threat shared by the Obama White House, but approached in a more pragmatic manner. 
 
 “The Netanyahu myth is that he alone understands the Americans,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York and former adviser to four Israeli foreign ministers. 
 
 Pinkas said the speech will be applauded by Republicans but will do little to shape the Iran deal. “He is a grumpy, old man. He’s like a Republican senator from West Jerusalem. He talks like them, he dresses like them. He is always saying, �?They’re against me! They don’t like me!’ He’s dealing with an America he doesn’t know.” Pinkas predicted the speech will fall flat. 
 
 Israeli journalist and author of the best-selling history “My Promised Land,” Ari Shavit, said he expects Netanyahu to give “a brilliant and desperate speech.” 
 
 Shavit is sympathetic. He sees the Iranian threat as more “bloodcurdling” than ever. Yet he says the prime minister has made a mistake by working against the U.S. administration rather than beside it. 
 
 Now “Israel rather than Iran has been isolated,” Shavit wrote in a recent column . 
 
 Netanyahu has opposed any deal with Iran that does not dismantle its uranium-enrichment program and insisted that economic sanctions should be stiffened, not lifted. Kerry and his negotiators have said such a deal is impossible. 
 
 Senior administration officials say an imperfect agreement that freezes Iran’s nuclear ambitions and allows for monitoring leaves the world in a much safer place than a rogue Iran with the potential to rush toward a bomb in clandestine bunkers packed with centrifuges. 
 
 Iran has long maintained that it seeks only a peaceful atom, and it is within its rights to research and exploit nuclear energy. 
 
 Netanyahu does not believe this. The Israeli leader has brushed aside appeals by Jewish leaders in the United States, congressional Democrats and some of his allies at home to pull back and find a face-saving way to cancel the speech. 
 
 In Israel, Netanyahu faces an extremely tight race for reelection against a surprisingly strong challenger, Isaac Herzog, leader of the Labor Party, who has pounded Netanyahu for endangering U.S.-Israeli relations with his speech. 
 
 Two hundred former generals and commanders of the Israeli Defense Forces, Mossad intelligence agency, Shin Bet domestic security and National Police are scheduled to appear at a joint news conference Sunday to urge Netanyahu to avoid any further deterioration of the U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship. 
 
 All this may help Netanyahu at home. “There will be nothing new in this speech,” said Dan Avnon, a lecturer of political theory at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “The question here is who will be able to replace him? Can anyone else stand up in Congress and talk so forcefully against the leader of the United States? This has an effect on voters in Israel. People sit at home and say this man really steps up to the pressure.” 
 
 “What will happen after the speech? I honestly don’t know,” said Yuval Steinitz, Israeli minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, a Netanyahu confidant and the Israeli government’s top authority on the nuclear talks. 
 
 “It will be very clear this is a historic speech,” Steinitz said. “Because this issue is burning in his bones. He really feels that as prime minister of Israel this is his first priority, above all other issues.” 
 
 Netanyahu’s speech is going to be especially challenging, as it must reach multiple audiences with multiple messages. 
 
 “He is speaking to the people of Israel, his political system, to the administration, to Congress and to the American people, as well,” said Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a former foreign policy adviser to the prime minister who is still part of his inner circle. 
 
 “I think the notion that this speech is for political purposes is baseless,” said Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. 
 
 Netanyahu has reveled on the grand stages afforded him in past performances at the United Nations and before Congress. In a September 2012 address before the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu employed a kind of Wile E. Coyote drawing of a bomb with a fuse and took out a marker to draw a literal red line. 
 
 Netanyahu’s intelligence minister said he has not seen a draft of the speech, but he said the prime minister will stress that leaving Iran with thousands of centrifuges and a stockpile of uranium — materials that Israelis say would allow Iran to break through to a nuclear bomb in months, not years — is too dangerous. 
 
 “Our position is simple,” Steinitz said. “Iran built a nuclear program in secret, illegally. They want normal relations with the world? Okay, dismantle it.” 
 
 Ruth Eglash and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.
– 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.