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”
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.”
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 Democrats or their 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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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