"I think the animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible," US House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday.
"And I think that the pressure that they've put on him over the last four orfive years have frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up."
Boehner will travel to Israel this week, while Congress is on recess, in a trip he said was scheduled before the rift between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, over the speech to Congress that Boehner had invited Netanyahu to make.
He also promised to move "very" quickly toward imposing steep new sanctions on Iran if Obama doesn't strike a deal with the country to avert its nuclear ambitions.
Boehner also defended Netanyahu from criticism that Obama and the White House have been leveling at him over the last month.
He said Netanyahu didn't cross any lines when he said, in the lead-up to Israel's election, that a Palestinian state would not be established.
"Well, he doesn't have a partner," Boehner said. "How do you have a two-state solution when you don't have a partner in that solution, when youdon't have a partner for peace, when you've got a – when the other state is vowing to wipe you off the face of the earth?"
Meanwhile, columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News that Obama has been waging "an incredibly hostile" campaignagainst Netanyahu.
