Obama focuses on unity, Netanyahu on sovereignty

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The United States and Israel agree that diplomacy is the best way to resolve the crisis over potential Iranian nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama said Monday, an optimistic view that Israel’s leader declined to endorse publicly.

“Both the prime minister and I prefer to solve this diplomatically,” Obama said as he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began several hours of White House consultations. The U.S. will consider all options in confronting what it sees as the unacceptable outcome of an Iranian bomb, Obama said.

Netanyahu used a brief, cordial session before the White House cameras to remind his host that Israel will decide for itself how to confront a looming threat that both unites and divides the longtime allies.

Israel, he said, must remain “the master of its fate.”

That was a pointed reference to the main question hanging over Monday’s high-stakes meeting: Whether to try to stop an Iranian bomb with a military attack in the next several months. Many in the Israeli government lean toward striking very soon, a course the Obama administration sees as dangerously premature.