Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long presented his political and personal closeness with the United States as evidence of his indispensability to Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, who arrived with a camera-perfect American accent after spending much of his youth in the country, is said to have used his unique understanding of American politics to charm and trick many presidents into maintaining unwavering support for Israel and his personal political projects.
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For a while, President Donald Trump appeared to be the most submissive to Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of all presidents, especially after he became the first American leader to agree to join Israel in a joint war against Iran.
Nevertheless, with the war stalled, President Trump seemingly willing to make deals in the Middle East without Israel’s cooperation, and criticism of Israel growing in the United States, there is a sense in Israel that Netanyahu’s trump card may not be as useful as it once was.
It has come at a bad time for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu faces domestic elections in late October and several unresolved conflicts in the region in addition to an ongoing corruption trial.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington for talks with President Trump on Tuesday, his first since the war with Iran began, is therefore both a refreshment opportunity and a photo opportunity to remind Israelis of their connection to the US president.
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Relations between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump have been tense since the war with Iran began. Since reports surfaced that it was the Israeli prime minister who convinced the US president of the feasibility of the mission and the possibility of overthrowing the Iranian state.
Concerns are also growing in the US Congress over Netanyahu’s apparent pandering to Israel’s increasingly violent settler movement, including the extrajudicial detention of a US senator by settlers, alongside friction over Israel’s F-35 sale to regional rival Turkiye and the US decision to consider agreeing to a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia.
“The real reason for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit[to Washington]is completely ironic,” Aron Pincus, former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera. “He claims to be flying all the way to the United States to apparently attend the wake of his great friend (late Republican senator) Lindsey Graham.”
“We’ll probably have an agenda and we’ll talk about Iran, the F-35, the possibility of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia,” Pincus said.
“But in reality, this is about two things: one is that Israel wants to assure its allies and critics within Israel that their relationship with Trump is maintained, and the other is that they hope that Trump will again ask for a pardon in the corruption trial,” he said, referring to Trump’s unusual intervention in Israel on Netanyahu’s behalf in November 2025.
But while Prime Minister Netanyahu may be hoping that a good meeting with President Trump might help him in the polls, it comes at a time when Netanyahu’s stock in the United States is potentially at its lowest.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has faced widespread criticism from figures on the US right, including podcast host Tucker Carlson and former Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Vice President J.D. Vance has also criticized “some” Israelis, using an interview with American podcaster Joe Rogan to suggest that people within the Israeli government are trying to derail the deal he was brokering with Iran to end the war.
Analysts have suggested that the Trump-Netanyahu meeting will involve a combination of public flattery and private cynicism on the part of the US president. “Nobody’s going to tell me what to sell,” Trump said Monday on Air Force One when asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public resistance to selling the F-35 to Turkiye.
“Mr. Netanyahu arrived in Washington at a time when even many in[Trump’s]circle were suspicious of him. He became toxic to the United States,” said Aaron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior professor of war studies at King’s College London. “In the United States, he is seen as the person who drew Trump into a war of choice that was, for better or worse, a strategic disaster. No one, not even Trump, will allow him to pretend to be the smartest man in the room. Those days are over.”
Few expect obvious signs of disharmony during his public visits, but there may be limits to Netanyahu’s ability to present himself as uniquely positioned to manage relations with the United States, a key element of the upcoming election.
Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and former top aide to Prime Minister Netanyahu in the 1990s, told Al Jazeera that “Prime Minister Netanyahu has had a great track record with the United States, but he has built a lot of bridges,” adding that criticism of Netanyahu is not limited to figures in the nationalist wing of the Republican Party but also includes Israel’s traditional allies within the center-right wing of the party.
“We’ve seen tensions rise through President Trump’s comments on various F-35 sales, including the recent F-35 sale to Turkiye, and through U.S. criticism of Netanyahu at the start of the Iran war, so I’m not sure Trump will stumble for Netanyahu for that long,” Barak said. “It’s entirely possible that President Trump declared that while Prime Minister Netanyahu was a great wartime leader, it was time for Israel to move on before meeting with[other Israeli politicians]to support Israel’s new prime minister.”
