Deal breaker?

WASHINGTON—The scene at the U.S. Capitol on March 3 rivaled President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address six weeks prior: suffocating security and a packed joint session of Congress.

But the similarities between the two scenes mostly ended there. Obama’s speech strategically omitted the words “radical Islam,” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the danger facing both Israel and the United States: “The greatest danger to the world is for militant Islam to gain nuclear weapons. … To defeat ISIS but allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons is to win the battle and lose the war.”

Netanyahu’s speech came against the backdrop of Obama administration negotiations with Iran, which have repeatedly stalled and extended beyond multiple deadlines. Many Democrats said Netanyahu’s appearance would turn into a political circus and undercut ongoing negotiations, so he went out of his way to thank Obama and Democrats for being friends of Israel, and then blasted what he called “a bad deal—a very bad deal.”

Netanyahu pointed to reports that the current framework would allow Iran to maintain thousands of working centrifuges to enrich uranium. He said the agreement would sunset in 10 years and spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. That’s convincing to U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, who said, “We need to have deadline-triggered sanctions ... and we need to pass them now, not wait to see if they break the agreement.”

Many Democrats accused Republicans of unprecedented meddling in foreign affairs when House Speaker John Boehner extended the speaking invitation to Netanyahu, but one Democrat, former senator and vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, told me Netanyahu “really made the case, like a lawyer arguing to a jury, why the current deal with Iran is a bad deal. … I hope that the administration will put the brakes on.”

Some Democrats in Congress also liked the speech. “He changed minds,” U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., told The Hill. “The question is: How many minds did he change?”

Boehner’s invitation does have parallels: Democratic Speaker Jim Wright went around the Reagan administration to negotiate with Nicaragua in the 1980s, and former GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich routinely hosted foreign leaders to do business. Boehner said his office received ticket requests 10 times greater than the number of available seats in the House gallery.

Before the speech Boehner presented Netanyahu with a bust of Winston Churchill—the only other foreign leader to address a joint session of Congress on three occasions.

Obama operatives are pushing for Netanyahu’s defeat in his March 17 reelection bid, and they panned the speech as nothing new. That may be true, but it brought a Paul Revere–type warning—an Iranian bomb is coming—to millions of Americans who may not have otherwise heard it. If Netanyahu’s predictions come true, the United States can’t say “nobody told me.”