Opinion

A widening rift

It was pretty bad then: Netanyahu and Obama meeting at last year’s UN General Assembly. The White House announced yesterday that a face-to-face sit-down just couldn’t happen this month. (Reuters)

Yesterday’s announcement that President Obama can’t find the time to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later this month risks sending a disastrously wrong message: Obama believes that America’s scariest Mideast problem is Israel, not the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

The shocking news from the White House yesterday came after days of increasingly bitter public exchanges between Washington and Jerusalem.

As I wrote last week, Bibi has been eagerly anticipating a sit-down with Obama late this month, when both are in town to address the UN General Assembly. If the president’s going to put off a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities — a delay that risks leaving Israel unable to do the job alone — Netanyahu wants some firm commitment that America will do the job if diplomacy fails.

Yesterday morning, with the White House still officially trying to schedule the meeting, Netanyahu went public: If Obama wants to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in the last two months of the US campaign season, he better spell out his Iran red lines.

Yes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said Monday: Sorry — no red lines coming. Netanyahu’s answer yesterday: “Those in the international community who refuse to put a red line before Iran don’t have the moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

And that yielded yesterday afternoon’s word from the White House: It just won’t be practical for Obama to meet Netanyahu.

In other words: Nothing doin’, buddy. Wait your turn. Stop worrying.

There’s no official refusal to meet, of course. Too many pro-Israel voters live in places like Florida and Ohio for the White House to do that.

Bam and Bibi are “simply not in the city at the same time,” insists National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor. He adds that Netanyahu, who is in constant touch with Obama, “will meet with other senior officials, including Secretary Clinton, during his visit.”

OK, Obama is to address the UN General Assembly on Sept. 25, then leave town. Because of Yom Kippur, Netanyahu only arrives in New York two days later.

But my Jerusalem sources confirm the obvious: Bibi would certainly go to Washington to meet Obama. There’s a 30-hour window before the prime minister heads home. (Presumably, if Obama’s off campaigning in Ohio, Bibi could fly there, too.)

Maybe Obama’s just avoiding a powwow because, after last week’s “no Jerusalem” debacle at the Democratic convention, the last thing he needs is a sour-faced photo-op with pesky Netanyahu, who keeps bugging him about Iran.

But the stakes are different for Netanyahu: As the Associated Press reported yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency has received “new and significant intelligence over the past month that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon.”

Ability-schmability, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CBS: America has the power to “do what we have to do to try to stop [Iran] from developing nuclear weapons” — which he insisted won’t happen for at least a year yet.

We have “pretty good intelligence” on Iran, Panetta added, so we’d know when they’ll actually decide to go nuclear.

Huh? The record of the US intelligence community is pretty rotten on this front: We failed to know in advance when North Korea, India and Pakistan tested their devices.

And America has never acted militarily to stop rogue nations from getting the bomb. Israel has, twice.

But this time Jerusalem increasingly believes it must act soon: Tehran is moving more and more of its nuclear program into hardened bases that Israeli forces can’t take out.

Hence the urgent request for Obama to set “red lines.”

In fact, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, a Netanyahu confidante, told me Monday that red lines — conditions for ending Iran diplomacy — aren’t enough: “We also need a deadline,” after which a Western military attack would become inevitable.

That’s not just for Israeli ears, Steinitz said. “Even more so, the Iranian leadership needs to hear it.” Such an ultimatum “is the only chance we have [to compel] the Iranians to change their minds and stop their military nuclear project.”

Washington’s answer: No red lines, no deadlines — and no Bibi-Bam sit-down (at least not until Nov. 7).

The longer this escalates, the greater the chance that Israel will feel cornered — forced to act, rather than wait for a more cooperative mood in Washington.

This ugly US-Israel rift is bad news for everyone except the Iranian regime. Fixing it can’t be put off until after Election Day.