Peace was barely mentioned.
Amidst drumbeats rising over when war – or at least punishing air strikes – might be needed to prevent Tehran's mullahs from getting nuclear weapons, the long-stalled Israel-Palestinian peace process got short shrift Monday.
Half a world away from election-gripped Washington, Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat wasn't surprised.
"This speech is part of Obama's election campaign," said Mr. Erekat, referring to the President's address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday.
"When the chips are down, I have Israel's back," Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama, accused both by his Republican rivals and some Israelis of failing to back the Jewish state, was more hawkish on Iran than ever before, both in his speech to AIPAC and in Oval Office comments before talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
He called Israel "an island of democracy and one of our greatest allies."
As for the peace process, it barely got a mention from the President and none at all from the Israeli leader.
Mr. Obama said the two would discuss "how we can potentially bring about a calmer set of discussions between the Israelis and the Palestinians and arrive at a peaceful resolution to that long-standing conflict."
But in his speech, the President offered a range of reasons as to why – at least since uprisings roiled the Arab world a year ago – no progress has been made. "The upheaval and uncertainty in Israel's neighbourhood makes [peace]that much harder – from the horrific violence raging in Syria, to the transition in Egypt. And the division within the Palestinian leadership makes it harder still – most notably, with Hamas's continued rejection of Israel's very right to exist."
But neither his avowed willingness – if sanctions fail – to resort to military strikes to deny Tehran nuclear weapons, nor the most unambiguously pro-Israel speech of Mr. Obama's presidency defused accusations that he is a less-than-reliable ally.
Mr. Obama has "the worst relations with Israel [of]any president in recent history," said Arizona Senator John McCain, who as the Republican presidential candidate lost to Mr. Obama in 2008.
Current Republican front-runner Mitt Romney was more dire. "It's pretty straightforward in my view," he said. "If Barack Obama gets re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon."
Mr. Obama insists that won't happen, that his policy isn't containment of a nuclear-armed Iran but keeping the Islamic theocracy from ever developing a nuclear-weapons capability.
However, for many, that vow sounds similar to the promises of both Democratic and Republican presidents to do whatever was needed to prevent North Korea from getting nuclear weapons.
Mr. Netanyahu warned he won't wait much longer before attacking Iran.
"For 15 years, I've been warning that a nuclear-armed Iran is a grave danger to my country," he said in his speech to AIPAC on Monday evening. He said sanctions had failed. "Israel has waited, patiently waited, for the international community to resolve this issue. We've waited for diplomacy to work. We've waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer," he said to thunderous applause.
"I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation."
The Israeli leader said it was beyond doubt that Iran intended to tip its missiles with nuclear warheads.
With more than half of Congress among the 13,000 attending AIPAC's annual meeting and Washington's huge Convention packed to overflowing, the considerable power of the pro-Israel lobby was on full display.
The president, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the three leading Republican presidential candidates are among a parade of notable speakers.
For many Israelis and their supporters in the United States, the disconnect is between what Mr. Netanyahu sees as an existential and imminent threat and what is regarded in Washington as a serious but manageable foreign-policy problem, among many others.
As AIPAC executive-director Howard Kohr made clear, the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran are very different when viewed from Jerusalem rather than Washington. "Israel's place in Iran's ideology, its size, its proximity to danger – all these create a disequilibrium, a divergence about when Iran's actions present a critical danger, say to the United States or the West, and when they pose a critical danger to Israel."
But there are also stark political risks for Mr. Obama, whether or not Tehran's murky nuclear ambitions become clear before the November election.
The only time since the Second World War when a Democratic president sought but failed to win a second term was in 1980, when Jimmy Carter's bid for re-election was doomed by the Iran hostage crisis and a failed military strike.