Benjamin Netanyahu was optimistic that Israel’s fate would be different. While much of the world braced for the impact of Donald Trump’s encore in the Oval Office—and the fallout from his repeated vows to stop the world from “ripping us off”—Israel’s prime minister was buoyant at the repeat prospect of playing tag team with a U.S. president who prides himself on being “Israel’s best friend.” Just over 100 days into the second Trump administration, however, Netanyahu appears to be lamenting the emerging gap between what Trump says on Israel and what he’s actually willing to do.
Things started out well enough. Just two weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Netanyahu was welcomed to Washington as the first foreign leader to visit the White House during the president’s second term. Door prizes awaiting Netanyahu included an executive order halting U.S. involvement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and blocking all U.S. funding for UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees—two entities with which Israel’s interactions have been famously acrimonious—and a presidential memorandum restoring “maximum pressure” on Iran’s government. Trump then said in a White House press conference that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too.” The prime minister returned to Jerusalem in triumphant spirits.
But the price of subcontracting a substantial degree of Israel’s autonomy to the Trump administration is hefty. And it was on full display when Netanyahu was abruptly summoned back to Washington for an audience with the president on April 7.
Waiting for the prime minister on that occasion was public humiliation. Israel’s preemptive revocation of all duties on U.S. imports failed to solicit reciprocal annulment of the 17 percent tariff imposed by the Trump administration on Israeli products, which had been Netanyahu’s primary mission that day. Trump also waxed noncommittal on his original designs for Gaza, suggesting that “a lot of people like my concept, but, you know, there are other concepts that I like too.” Most uncomfortable for Netanyahu, though, was being deployed as the backdrop for Trump’s surprise declaration that his representatives would be launching “very high level” talks with Iran just days later. The prime minister went home with his tail between his legs.
Realities of present-day Washington have greatly exacerbated Netanyahu’s predicament. Adept historically at navigating the U.S. capital, the prime minister is fast discovering that his ability to maneuver in that political minefield has been curtailed dramatically. Today’s Republican majority operates under the binding spell of Trump—its captain who would be pope—who has no tolerance for dissent, even to argue the merits of Israel’s case. That truth was made crystal clear when the ouster of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was attributed, in part, to his “intense coordination” with Netanyahu of military force against Iran. (Netanyahu has denied reports of any such direct intervention.)
In fact, Israel seems to have drawn the short stick in the internal struggle over the ideological core of the current administration. The sidelining of Waltz and dismissal of a cohort of other National Security Council personnel—amid accusations of their disloyalty to Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda—was a watershed moment, signaling the apparent defeat of the traditional conservatives in the president’s orbit who had advocated for more robust support of Israel. With the victorious MAGA isolationists, led by Vice President J.D. Vance, seizing the reins decisively, Israel now worries that Trump might be inclined toward dangerous, subpar deals that would free the United States to divert its attention elsewhere.
That fear is most palpable with regard to Iran and the menace that it poses to Israel’s welfare. Netanyahu—for whom preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability is a signature issue—and other champions of his case are appealing for the United States to adopt an uncompromising posture toward Tehran but with very limited success. Trump is rejecting their binary calculus of either a “Libya-style” arrangement that dismantles Iran’s nuclear infrastructure completely or kinetic force. His confidence that an agreement will be reached “pretty soon … without having to start dropping bombs all over the place” is rattling nerves in Jerusalem, where it is recognized that Iran has actually advanced toward nuclear breakout since Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018.
Contradictory messages emanating from the administration are confounding Israeli officials. Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on May 4, Trump offered that he’d accept nothing less than “total dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program, before pivoting to add that he was “open to hearing” about a civilian scheme, echoing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s earlier assertion that “there’s a pathway to a civil, peaceful nuclear program if [the Iranians] want one.” Steve Witkoff, Trump’s real estate chum-turned-special envoy, told Fox News on April 14 that Iran does “not need to enrich [uranium] past 3.67 percent,” only to backtrack the next day on X and demand that Iran “eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Israeli concerns over the contours of any future U.S.-Iranian understanding are manifold. Trump’s pronouncement that “the only thing [the Iranians] can’t have is a nuclear weapon” threatens to shrink the scope of discussion, excluding additional points of contention, such as Iran’s development of long-range ballistic missiles and its sponsorship of terrorism. Another risk could come from lenient sunset clauses, after whose expiration Iran would be able to resume the pursuit of its nuclear ambitions full-throttle.
Those tensions are becoming bitterly personal, illustrated in the clamor surrounding the quality of U.S. mediation. Witkoff, with Trump’s explicit encouragement, has assumed responsibility for multiple shuttle negotiations, from Iran to Gaza to Ukraine to, most recently, Yemen. Critics of his role have disparaged his tactics, his lack of experience with international diplomacy, his preference for flying solo, and his capacity for multitasking on this scale. (One veteran of the first Trump administration told the New York Post that Witkoff is a “nice guy, but a bumbling f—king idiot [who] … should not be doing this alone.”)
Pushback from Trump surrogates has been fierce. “Deep State neocons are smearing Steve Witkoff because they’re trying to undermine my father’s foreign policy agenda,” presidential scion Donald Trump Jr. ranted on X. Netanyahu is thus handcuffed, virtually incapable of taking independent measures against Iran while a short-fused Trump wishes to engage its regime in conversation—during which time the Iranians are able to make further progress in their efforts to counter Israel.
The prime minister is finding it difficult to contain his frustration. He could be on a collision course with Trump in Syria as well, as Israel’s ramped-up military operations, ostensibly to defend itself and also that country’s Druze population, clash with the president’s predisposition to “stop wars.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—whom Trump congratulated in April for having “taken over Syria”—and his new Syrian counterpart, Ahmed al-Sharaa, with whom Trump is expected to meet next week, will be contributing fuel to that blaze undoubtedly. Israeli pleas to forestall the extraction of U.S. troops from Syria, which would allow Turkey greater freedom to consolidate its influence in the area, are falling on deaf ears.
Yemen’s Houthis—who have been lobbing missiles at Israel since just after the outbreak of the recent Gaza war—are also stirring up friction. Yielding to the then-incoming administration, Netanyahu halted Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes against the Yemeni rebels, effectively delegating the job to the United States, whose forces have bombed more than 1,000 Houthi targets since March. But on May 4, U.S. munitions and its sophisticated THAAD air defense system proved no match for a Houthi missile that landed at—and shut down—Israel’s main international gateway, Ben Gurion Airport, causing the rampant cancellation of flights.
Israel, of course, has no presumption to deliver comparable firepower to the United States. Nevertheless, the inherent escalation of that latest Houthi attack—which generated domestic pressure on the prime minister to order a powerful homegrown response—and the subsequent truce between the United States and the “relevant authorities” in Sanaa have brought Israel back off the sidelines. That evolving situation will challenge prevailing divisions of labor between Trump and Netanyahu, interfering potentially with the president’s priorities in the region.
Finally, and always, there is Gaza. That tormented—and tormenting—plot of land where Trump initially envisioned building “the Riviera of the Middle East” is poised instead to host a full-fledged Israeli incursion that, according to a unanimous decision of Israel’s security cabinet, will entail the “conquering of Gaza and holding the territories.” Such a turn of events will bring the curtain down, for the foreseeable future at least, on the president’s hopes for any imminent cease-fire or hostage deal and set back his vision of expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia. Trump, who has been demonstrating disinterest with the Palestinian theater lately, will be primed for a sudden change of heart once he perceives that his dreams are going up in smoke.
One thing is certain: Trump’s April 22 proclamation that he and the prime minister are “on the same side of every issue” doesn’t begin to capture the volatile cocktail of their present relationship. It’s hard to believe that the president would otherwise skip over Israel during his upcoming maiden voyage to the Middle East—just like his nemesis Barack Obama in 2009—and because he thinks evidently that there’s nothing he can get from a visit to Israel at the moment, according to Axios. (Israeli principals are scrambling to get Israel on his itinerary.)
Netanyahu doesn’t have much time to devise a path of return to the president’s good graces. After being blindsided by both Trump’s abandonment of the campaign against the Houthis and his administration’s dialogue with Hamas, the prime minister will be losing sleep over the possibility of a similar, rude awakening on the Iran front. With Israel’s long-term security and prosperity dependent on many intricate layers of U.S. support, Netanyahu needs to start playing his hand better—and quickly—before his misalignment with the White House provokes Trump to rain hellfire down on his erstwhile best friend.
The post Why Netanyahu Might Be on a Collision Course With Trump appeared first on Foreign Policy.
