Now that it’s clear that Congress won’t be able to stop President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, the inevitable postmortems about why he won are starting to be heard. And since the argument about Iran has often been persuaded as a function of a personal feud between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, it’s hardly surprising that the latter is being blamed for what happened. That’s the upshot of a report in the Israeli press in which an anonymous AIPAC official is quoted as saying that Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was the only reason why the pro-Israel lobby failed to persuade enough Democrats to stop the deal. But for AIPAC to attempt to spin its defeat in this matter is both regrettable and misleading. I believe Netanyahu’s decision to accept House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint meeting of Congress was a tactical error and wrote as much repeatedly before he spoke. But the assertion that this incident alone changed the outcome is absurd. Even if Netanyahu had never come to Washington or if he had kept silent about the issue of Iran throughout the last six months, there was never any way AIPAC or anyone else was going to be able to get most Democrats to spurn a sitting president and the popular head of their party on an issue on which he had staked his foreign policy legacy. The Iran deal fight was won by Obama far more than it was lost by Netanyahu.

Though many of Netanyahu’s fans in this country were in denial about the way the speech played out, there’s no question that the AIPAC official is right to claim that it hurt the cause of the Iran deal critics. Prior to the announcement that Netanyahu would accept Boehner’s invitation, it seemed as if there was a solid bipartisan majority in favor of passing tougher sanctions on Iran. With the negotiations seemingly stuck in neutral for more than a year, a skeptical Congress was inclined to strengthen the administration’s hand in the talks by raising the stakes for Tehran. The proposed Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill would have only gone into effect had the talks ultimately failed, but the administration was still dead set against anything that might upset their Iranian negotiating partners.

But Netanyahu’s move did alter the dynamic of the discussion in Congress since it allowed the administration to go on the offense against the Israeli rather than have to defend what was, in the absence of any sign of real progress in the talks, an indefensible position opposing more pressure on Iran. There was nothing inherently offensive in having Netanyahu address Congress. Nor had the invitation been done in secret or behind the president’s back as the White House falsely asserted. There was also nothing unusual about a foreign leader seeking to influence a Congressional vote since Obama had persuaded European allies to weigh in on behalf of his stand. Nevertheless, the speech allowed the president to change the subject and, for at least a few weeks have the conversation on Iran focus on Netanyahu rather than a policy of appeasement of the Islamist regime.

But let’s not exaggerate the impact of the speech, either good or bad on the ultimate debate that followed. Netanyahu didn’t listen to the critics and gave his speech. He made a powerful argument against any deal that failed to stop the Iranian program rather than, as the president seemed intent on doing, enabling it to continue. Moreover, relatively few Democrats boycotted the speech as the White House hoped they would. But once it was over, the conversation about Iran shifted back to Obama and Iran, and Israel’s unhappiness about the course of the negotiations was relegated to the sidebar issue that it had always been. Nor did it have much impact on Netanyahu’s successful campaign for re-election.

Though some AIPAC staffers looking for an Israeli scapegoat are now saying that it was Netanyahu that lost the Democrats, that is a misreading of recent history. What changed the dynamic about Iran wasn’t the speech but the fact that a few weeks later, Iran and the West agreed to a framework for a final nuclear agreement. Once he had a deal in his pocket — something that would be confirmed in writing in July — Obama could argue that diplomacy had succeeded and that more sanctions were no longer needed.

At that point, the issue was no longer about a speech that was already ancient history in Washington. While a few Democrats — principally those in the Congressional Black Caucus — might have bought the White House’s lame attempt to claim Netanyahu was insulting the president, that was no longer relevant to the debate about the president’s often false and inflammatory claims about the terms of the deal. Moreover, though there was a moment when some in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses might have thought Netanyahu was colluding with Boehner, the issue had  shifted from Israel and the GOP to the president’s demand that they back his policies. And it was at this point that the bipartisan consensus on Iran cracked. Faced with a choice that would have required them to kill the administration’s key foreign policy initiative, most Democrats felt they had no choice but to go along with Obama. The power of the presidency is such that the outcome then became a foreordained conclusion.

Netanyahu’s Israeli political foes will seize on the AIPAC staffer’s quote to claim that it buttresses their arguments that the prime minister has undermined the alliance with the United States or that a less confrontational approach would have yielded a different result. But, like the obsessive criticism of the speech, these are unpersuasive arguments. Obama was aiming for détente with Iran from his first moment in office and pursued it relentless for six and a half years until he got his deal. Nothing any Israeli leader — and all the major parties agree with Netanyahu that the deal is a disaster for the Jewish state as well as the West — could have done or said would have altered his course. Nor could any Israeli have ever persuaded Democrats to abandon their president once Obama made the Iran deal a litmus test of partisan loyalty.

Losing to an incumbent president in this manner is nothing for AIPAC to be ashamed about. In the end, a majority of both the House and the Senate will vote (or at least they will if Democrats don’t have a filibuster on the deal in the Senate) against the Iran deal. And, as I wrote yesterday, Democrats are now, thanks to Obama, saddled with the responsibility for Iran’s misconduct and crimes from this moment forward.

AIPAC needs to focus on rallying Democrats who don’t want Iran to be hung around their necks in the future to back bills that will sanction Tehran for their support for terror. It has its work cut out for it in the last 17 months of an administration that clearly has a grudge against Israel. But let’s stop the blame game about the Iran deal. Netanyahu may have blundered when he came to Congress, but that didn’t change anything in the long run. It was the Democrats and not the GOP and Netanyahu that broke the consensus on Iran. The only persons who should be held accountable for a disastrous agreement that empowers the Islamist regime is the president who demanded it and the Democrats who, reluctantly or not, have allowed him to get away with it.