Republican House Speaker John Boehner will lead a group of Republican lawmakers on a visit to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on March 31, The Hill reported on Friday.
An Israeli government official confirmed the trip to CNN. The Haaretz newspaper reported that the lawmakers will arrive on March 31, which happens to be the deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran, although the visit had been planned before the election.
Boehner drew the ire of the White House and other Democrats when he invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress in early March without consulting the administration. He later explained he felt it was important to do an end-run around White House "interference".
White House officials panned the move as a breach of decorum and a number of Democratic lawmakers boycotted the speech on grounds that it had a political motivation, coming just weeks before the Israeli parliamentary elections.
The latest spat between lawmakers and the administration revolves around the nuclear deal with Iran, which lawmakers are asking be brought for approval before Congress.
President Barack Obama has made clear that he will not submit any such deal to Congress for approval. Republicans warned in a letter to Iran last week that doing so may mean that Congress or the next president will act to nullify the accord.
The letter angered Obama, who suggested Republicans were “wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is planning to vote on legislation that would force Obama to submit any nuclear agreement with Iran for Congress' approval, which the president has threatened to veto.
Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said earlier this week he wanted to have the committee vote on the legislation next Thursday, but has agreed to postpone the vote until April 14.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)