Austin hears mixed messages in Jerusalem

Israel is getting proficient at providing the split-screen moment.

Last week, it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Jerusalem District Court on one side of the television screen, while on the other side – at exactly the same time – the Likud recommended Netanyahu to President Reuven Rivlin as the candidate who should be tasked with forming a government. The contrast was glaring.

And on Sunday, Israel also starred in another split-screen moment.

On one side of the screen, an Iranian official spokesman announced that an electrical “accident” befell the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, just hours after it boasted that it inaugurated new high-speed centrifuges there. Suspicion naturally was directed at Israel for a cyberattack.

And on the other side of the screen, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was reviewing a military honor guard at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, soon after landing in Israel for the first cabinet-level visit by a member of the new Biden administration. The timing of those events was interesting.

Eleven years ago, when then-vice president Joe Biden made his first visit to Israel, it was accompanied by an Israeli announcement of new building plans for the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. Though that was widely interpreted abroad as an Israeli attempt to embarrass Biden, the Prime Minister’s Office said at the time that it was simply unfortunate timing, with the plans coincidentally moving through the planning process as Biden was arriving.

A mechanism was put into place to ensure such snafus did not occur again. Israel had no interest in embarrassing Biden, a friend in an Obama administration whose tone was already chilly.

Likewise, the timing of the incident in Natanz should not be connected to the Austin visit, even though it came just days after the US and Iran began indirect negotiations to reenter the Iranian nuclear deal, and just four days after Netanyahu made clear that the deal would in no way obligate Israel.

But just as Jerusalem had no interest in embarrassing or alienating Biden in 2010, it has no interest in making things difficult for Austin.

Just as the Ramat Shlomo announcement 11 years ago was not about Biden, but rather Israel’s perception of its own interests, so, too, any action Israel takes against Iran’s nuclear program is not about the US, but rather