Biden speaks with Netanyahu after delay raises questions

by



[ad_1]

The period without communication had raised questions about what was behind the delay, although the White House insisted the two had a strong relationship and that Biden was simply calling leaders from other regions before arriving at the Middle East.

“It was a good conversation,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office shortly after the call ended, without giving further details.

In a message on Twitter, Netanyahu said he spoke with Biden for about an hour in “friendly and warm” terms, affirming the US-Israel alliance and discussing issues related to Iran, diplomacy region and the coronavirus pandemic.

He attached a photo of himself over the phone, smiling broadly, with a map of the Middle East in the background.

The call came four weeks after Biden’s inauguration, a length that supporters and opponents of Netanyahu thought could be a signal that the Israeli prime minister no longer occupied the privileged position in the White House he had. enjoyed under President Donald Trump.

Asked why Biden had waited so long to call Netanyahu after speaking to a dozen other world leaders, the White House said last week that there was nothing to read in the delay.

“He will be speaking with him soon,” press secretary Jen Psaki said, declining to provide a specific date or time for the speech. She later claimed Netanyahu would be Biden’s first phone call to a Middle East leader.

Netanyahu's wait for Biden call raises questions about US priorities

Yet the decision to forgo an appeal to the Israeli prime minister for nearly his first month in office did not appear to be a coincidence. A source close to the White House think tank said there was a sense of reward in keeping Netanyahu waiting for an appeal.

The Israeli leader’s cold treatment of President Barack Obama and his close alignment with Trump and the Republican Party, as well as the time it took to congratulate Biden on his victory, did not go unnoticed, the source said.

Other current and former US officials have said Biden has simply “properly sized” the US relationship with Israel and that with the challenges posed by China, Russia, climate change and other issues, the Middle East is not a top priority.

For his part, Netanyahu played down the delay.

“(President Biden) calls the leaders in whatever order he sees fit, North America, then Europe,” Netanyahu said at a press conference last week. “He hasn’t reached the Middle East yet. I guess he will call me. Believe me, I have no doubt.”

On Friday, Biden is expected to lay out his vision for foreign policy in more detail in a virtual speech at the Munich security conference, including the prospects of returning to the Iran nuclear deal.

Israel has opposed the deal, and the issue is likely to be a rift between Netanyahu and the Biden administration, just as it did under Obama.

But on other issues the pair appear aligned, including support for the Arab-Israeli normalization agreements that the Trump administration helped negotiate.

CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Oren Liebermann, Andrew Carey and Amir Tal contributed to this report.

[ad_2]

Source link