So, if this supposedly came from some US official, who was the one feeding this to Channel 1? Unnamed official?

Was the source Mr. Diver? Dumpster Diver? Or maybe someone who has such animus for the Administration that they felt comfortable in lying about the contents of a conversation they knew was to take place?

In any event, the point of spreading this lie was to poison the already tense relationship between Netenyahu and Obama, make any diplomatic efforts more difficult, and to paint Obama and Kerry dipomatic efforts as bullying Israel into something it doesn’t want to do.