The White House canceled a high-level US-Israeli meeting on Iran that had been scheduled for Thursday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video on Tuesday claiming the US was withholding military aid, two US officials told Axios.
President Joe Biden’s top advisers were enraged by the tape, a message that US diplomat Amos Hochstein delivered to Netanyahu in a letter in a meeting hours after it was released, two US and Israeli sources said.
The White House decided to go one step further by canceling Thursday’s meeting.
“This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for performing such stunts,” the US official said.
“The Americans are angry. Bibi’s video did a lot of damage,” said a senior Israeli official, using a nickname for Netanyahu.
Speaking in English, Netanyahu said in a video that “it is unthinkable that over the past few months the administration has withheld weapons and ammunition from Israel.”
In public, the White House expressed confusion. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that only one arms shipment had been paused since the start of the war, while billions of dollars in weapons flowed unhindered.
“We really don’t know what he’s talking about,” she said.
According to another US official who spoke to Axios, the Biden team is angry and shocked by Netanyahu’s ingratitude.
Biden’s top advisers decided to cancel the strategic dialogue on Iran, which was supposed to include hours of meetings with officials from the State Department, Pentagon and US intelligence agencies, along with their Israeli counterparts.
