President Barack Obama, left, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, during his arrival ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, March 20, 2013, (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive an award from a conservative think tank on the same day that he meets with President Barack Obama.
Netanyahu will receive the American Enterprise Institute’s 2015 Irving Kristol Award on the evening of Nov. 9. He will be meeting with Obama during the day at the White House — their first meeting since tensions between the leaders burst into the open earlier this year over the Iran nuclear deal.
AEI is a leading conservative think tank and has produced papers excoriating some of Obama’s signature policies, including his health care reform and the Iran deal.
On Sept. 8, AEI was where former Vice President Dick Cheney lambasted the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal, calling it “madness.”
Obama sees the agreement as his most important foreign policy achievement. Netanyahu bitterly opposes the deal, saying it leaves Iran a nuclear weapons threshold state.
