JERUSALEM — President Biden issued one of the most blunt warnings to Tehran about his presidency on Thursday, pledging to Israeli leaders that “we will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” but Israel’s acting prime minister, Yair Lapid, went even further, calling on all democratic nations to swear action if the Iranians continue to “develop their nuclear program”.
The distinction between Mr. Biden’s vow to stop a “weapon” and Mr. Lapid’s insistence on destroying the entire Iranian “program” was more than semantic: it goes to the heart of their countries’ differing approaches to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Even amid frequent and public assertions of the close relationship between Israel and the United States, differences over how to handle Iran remain stubborn. Several times Thursday, members of the Israeli leadership publicly and privately urged the United States to develop a more credible military option to eliminate Iranian nuclear facilities, in order to convince Tehran that it must stop a rapidly accelerating program .
“If they continue to develop their nuclear program, the free world will use force,” Lapid said at the opening of a press conference in Jerusalem after the two leaders met as part of the visit of four days of Mr. Biden in the Middle East. .
During those remarks, Mr. Biden listened intently but never repeated that pledge. Instead, he just talked about preventing Iran from getting a weapon – not a “program” that might be intended to develop one.
But even these longstanding differences in strategy are evolving, amid cracks in Israel’s own consensus on the imminence and urgency of a threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
And on Thursday, those differences over Iran’s strategy were largely set aside on the first full day of Mr. Biden’s maiden trip to the Middle East as president, to a region where alliances and relationships have since changed dramatically. that he was here for the last time as Barack Obama’s vice-president. President.
On Friday, he moves on to the toughest task of the trip: trying to rekindle the alliance with Saudi Arabia, amid heavy criticism, particularly from his own party’s progressive wing, that he is rehabilitating a crown prince whom the CIA believes knew of, and possibly complicit in, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based dissident and columnist.
Mr. Biden’s mission in Jerusalem was to strengthen and deepen relations with Israeli leaders while circumventing a tumultuous election for a new prime minister.
And Mr. Biden used Thursday’s press conference with Mr. Lapid to bolster Israel’s blossoming relationship with a handful of Arab states, including the creation of a joint air defense zone to protect against drones. and Iranian missiles. Administration officials say that while they push for full diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, they expect only gradual progress toward that goal on this trip.
But it is Mr. Biden’s own relationship with Saudi Arabia that takes up most of the second part of his visit. At Thursday’s brief press conference, Mr. Biden was pressed directly on whether he would raise the case of Mr. Khashoggi’s murder when he met with Saudi leaders on Friday. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is accused of directly condoning the brutal murder in Istanbul in 2018 of Mr Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who lived in the United States.
Mr Biden said on Thursday that his views on the murder were well known, but he refrained from saying whether he would specifically raise the dissident’s name when meeting Prince Mohammed.
“My views on Khashoggi have been absolutely, positively clear,” Biden said, adding that he has never been shy about speaking openly about human rights to his allies and opponents. But while the US leader was scheduled to fly directly from Israel to Jeddah on Friday — a flight that speaks volumes about the changing environment in the Middle East — administration officials were still debating how he should, if appropriate, raise the matter in the public comments. on Saudi soil.
In other instances, including Cuba and Venezuela, Mr. Biden stressed that his administration made democracy and respect for human rights the primary consideration in dealing with the leaders of other nations. But on Thursday in Jerusalem, he said “the reason I’m going to Saudi Arabia is to promote American interests.” These include getting the kingdom to pump more oil from its somewhat modest spare capacity.
Mr. Biden was clearly in his element all day in Jerusalem. These were the kinds of trips he loved as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later as vice chairman.
Mr Biden celebrated the signing of a new “Jerusalem Declaration”, a reaffirmation of the strength of the alliance between the two countries, of American commitments not to allow Iran to obtain a weapon, and of the Israel’s rapprochement with many Arab adversaries who had tried to undermine the creation of a Jewish state.
While little in the statement was new, the fact that it so boldly set out the broad outlines of the relationship – signed by a Democratic president whom many in Israel viewed with suspicion, and by an Israeli prime minister acting seeking to make his role permanent – has dominated much of the public debate in Israel.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden received the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor and, borrowing from the Torah, he called Israel “a nation that will never stand alone, because as long as there is the United States, you will never be only”.
Presiding over the medal ceremony, Israel’s limited political president Isaac Herzog said government officials had found a recording of Biden’s first trip to Israel as a young senator in 1973. During that visit, Mr. Herzog read, Mr. Biden “was carried away by his enthusiasm,” a description that seemed no less apt nearly half a century later.
Later Thursday, Mr. Biden attended the opening of the Maccabiah Games, a quadrennial international Jewish sports competition.
Mr. Biden spent much of his trip touting joint projects between Israel and the United States, starting with the Iron Dome rocket interceptor system and a new system called Iron Beam, still a prototype, which uses lasers. Mr. Biden attended a protest as soon as he arrived in Israel, setting the tone for the rest of his trip.
“These technologies and advances are critical,” Biden said. “Each intercepted rocket is a potential life, maybe more, that is saved.”
His pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon was not new – George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump had all made similar vows – but his harsher language was unusually explicit, including the promise to use military force if necessary. (Mr. Obama, for example, would avoid direct threats and instead talk about using “every instrument” of American power – financial, diplomatic and military.)
Israel has for several years pursued a policy of repeatedly blowing up facilities and assassinating leaders of the nuclear program in an effort to slow Iran’s ability to produce nuclear fuel. This covert program has accelerated over the past year, and Israeli officials have sometimes called it “mow the lawn”, an acknowledgment that no matter how quickly they detonate elements of the program, the Iranians are trying to rebuild.
The United States is pursuing another course, attempting to revive the now seven-year-old diplomatic deal with Iran that Mr Trump abandoned. That deal required Iran to ship 97% of its nuclear fuel out of the country, and many Israeli military and intelligence officials say they now believe Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the deal has failed, allowing Iran to resume and accelerate its nuclear enrichment program. Mr. Biden on Thursday reaffirmed his belief that diplomacy offers the only hope for a lasting solution.
For Lapid, taking a hardline stance on Iran in the presence of the US president may have been a political imperative in the run-up to the November election, when he hopes to convert his interim status to a full term in office. Prime Minister.
For years, Mr. Lapid has tried to avoid letting Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister, outflank him to the right on security issues, although on Thursday Mr. Netanyahu, after meeting with Mr. Biden said he told the president “a credible offensive military option is needed.
But Mr. Lapid’s defiance of Mr. Biden was softened by exuberant and friendly body language, and the session had none of the bristling tension that sometimes marked Mr. Netanyahu’s encounters with Mr. Biden when he was vice-president. Privately, some Israeli officials say they are more focused on Iran’s support for terrorist groups in the Middle East, and believe they would be warned enough if Iran decided to make a weapon.
Mr. Biden did not appear to take offense at Mr. Lapid’s public dissent. Indeed, when Mr. Lapid finished speaking at the press conference, Mr. Biden offered praise. “A telling statement,” he said.
Patrick Kingley, Pierre Boulanger, Isabelle Kershner and Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Jerusalem.