Ex-Arkansas Gov. supports Netanyahu's Congress speech

Former Arkansas governor and presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has expressed his support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to the US Congress.

Huckabee, who was in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem), said on Sunday that he was against the ongoing negotiations between the P5+1 group of countries and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program, Israeli media reported.

“Make it very clear. [Iran is] not going to have a nuclear weapon, whether it’s economic sanctions or military action, everything is on the table,” Huckabee, a likely 2016 Republican candidate for president, told reporters on Sunday.

“To negotiate with someone who cannot negotiate with good faith is like trusting the snake. But the snake is still going to bite you when it can.”

Referring to a Netanyahu’s controversial planned address to Congress, Huckabee said the speech won’t hurt Israel’s support among the American lawmakers.

Several Democratic members of Congress indicated they would boycott Netanyahu’s March 3 address, in which he is expected to attack the US government’s effort to finalize a nuclear agreement with Iran.

The controversy surrounding House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to the prime minister without informing the administration has further hurt already tense relations between Washington and Tel Aviv, with politicians and pr-Israel groups calling on him to cancel.

US President Barack Obama will not meet Netanyahu during his trip to Washington.

The Israeli prime minster accepted an invitation directly from Republican House Speaker John Boehner without consulting the White House first.

The Obama administration said the invitation was a “breach of protocol”.

US Vice President Joe Biden has also announced he would not be attending the speech because he was abroad.

In addition to Biden, several senior Democratic Congressmen have confirmed they would boycott the speech.

Despite the growing opposition to Netanyahu’s visit to the US, Huckabee, said “There is still strong support for Israel [in Congress]. Now there’s not strong support for John Boehner among the Democrats, so you have to understand what’s going on beneath the surface. This is not a snub to the prime minister. This is the internal politics between Democrats and Republicans.”

Politico reported on Tuesday that “many members” of the Congressional Black Caucus will not attend Netanyahu's speech.

“It’s not just about disrespect for the president, it’s disrespect for the American people and our system of government for a foreign leader to insert himself into a issue that our policy makers are grappling with,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) told Politico. “It’s not simply about President Obama being a black man disrespected by a foreign leader. It’s deeper than that.”

Huckabee said that “Americans need to know” about the “threats by Iran” and that the Iranian threat “is not unique to Israel, that it does, in fact, involve the United States and the rest of the world.”

His anti-Iran tirade came as freshly released US government documents showed that how Washington assisted Israel to develop a hydrogen bomb.

“I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the US,” Roger Mattson, a formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff, said of the report, according to Courthouse News.

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