The Jerusalem Post reports that President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has linked U.S. participation in stopping Iran’s nuclear threat to Israel, to Israel’s willingness to push the peace process forward.

Meanwhile in Ha’aretz it was reported that “Gen. James Jones, national security adviser to President Barack Obama, told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be “forceful” with Israel.” Ha’aretz also quotes Jones as saying that “The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question.. We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush.”

Meanwhile, former U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich criticized this growing pressure on Israel when he said President Obama’s program to get closer to Iran was a ‘fantasy’ as well as ‘dangerous for Israel’. The Jerusalm Post goes on to quote him as saying that the Obama approach is ‘the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter’.

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