US withholding details of Iran nuke talks from Israel

The Obama administration said Wednesday it is withholding from Israel some sensitive details of its nuclear negotiations with Iran because it is worried that Israeli government officials have leaked information to try to scuttle the talks - and will continue to do so.
     
In extraordinary admissions that reflect increasingly strained ties between the U.S. and Israel, the White House and State Department said they were not sharing everything from the negotiations with the Israelis and complained that Israeli officials had misrepresented what they had been told in the past. Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials privately blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself for "changing the dynamic" of previously robust information-sharing by politicizing it.
     
The comments came as a late March deadline to forge the outline of an Iran nuclear deal looms and U.S. and Iranian negotiators prepare for a new round of talks later this week in Geneva, Switzerland.
     
Netanyahu has angered the White House with his open opposition to a deal he believes threatens Israel's existence, and by accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress about Iran in early March without consulting the White House, a breach of diplomatic protocol.
     
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that sharing all details of the negotiations with governments that are not at the table would complicate efforts to get a deal that would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief. The talks are being held among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - along with Germany and Iran.
     
"The United States is not going to be in a...