Nayyera Haq is a broadcast journalist focusing on international security and diplomacy who previously served as a senior director at the White House, senior adviser at the State Department and spokesperson at the U.S. Treasury, where she advised the nation’s top leaders.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is not the first time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put a U.S. president in a precarious policy and political position. Back in 2015, then-President Barack Obama and the leaders of the nations known as the P5+1 – China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany – were using every tool in the national security tool box to constrain Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, including negotiating a deal to formally constrain that pursuit.
Criticism of him came swiftly, not only from Obama’s party — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi labeled Netanyahu’s behavior “an insult” to America — but from within Israel, as well. “I am also not thrilled about Obama’s policies,' said Yair Lapid, Netanyahu’s former finance minister. “But Netanhyahu crossed a line that caused the White House to stop listening to Israel. In the last year we weren’t even in the arena … and the door to the White House was closed to us.