Joe Biden’s job: Reassure Israelis on President Obama

When Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Jerusalem on Monday, he will be just the latest senior Obama administration official to travel there in an almost continuous stream of high-level consultations aimed at keeping Israel and the United States “on the same page” about Iran, as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry put it during his recent trip there.

In the past six weeks, other visitors have included CIA Director Leon Panetta; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Adviser Jim Jones; NSC Iran strategist Dennis Ross; Deputy Secretaries of State Jim Steinberg and Jack Lew; and Gen. Kevin Chilton, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met in the U.S. last week with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to come to Washington later this month for the annual AIPAC conference.

The U.S.-Israeli consultations are a critical component of an effort by the Obama administration to achieve consensus on a sanctions policy aimed at pressuring Iran to address international concerns about its nuclear program.

But it’s a delicate balancing act. Some countries, such as Brazil and China, which are members of the U.N. Security Council, believe sanctions are premature and must be approached slowly. In response, Clinton has traveled to Brazil and Riyadh, the latter trip an effort to persuade Saudi Arabia to offer energy guarantees to China if it would sign on to stiffer sanctions. But the U.S. worries that ineffective sanctions could spur Israel to carry out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

With about 200,000 U.S. troops stationed in nations bordering Iran, U.S. policymakers and commanders are concerned that an Israeli strike could risk retaliation against U.S. assets and allies and jeopardize efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is another subtext to Biden’s trip and the maneuvers over sanctions: the uneasy relationship between the Netanyahu government and President Barack Obama.

“Israelis have two key priorities,” veteran U.S. Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told POLITICO. “No. 1, ensuring that they are on top of the Iranian situation. And No. 2, making sure they are not at odds with the U.S.”

But, Miller said, “you could send 100 officials, you could park them there. It’s not going to allay the prime minister’s suspicions and others in his coalition.”

Obama has been widely perceived in Israel as more sympathetic to the Arab world than to Israel, an opinion reinforced by several factors.

Among them are Obama’s Cairo speech to the Muslim world last June and the fact that, as president, he has visited Cairo, Saudi Arabia and Turkey but has not yet gone to Israel. That he is sending Biden and not going himself has only increased the concerns that Biden’s visit is supposed to help alleviate.

The administration’s early public push for a halt to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was also seen as a challenge to the special relationship of Israel and the U.S.

Finally, Miller suggested, Israelis don’t know whether, at the end of the day, they can count on Obama to use force against Iran if other measures fail to change its nuclear behavior.