On Monday, an unusually camera-shy Benjamin Netanyahu hopped on a flight to Washington. It wasn’t totally clear he would. Officially, Netanyahu was travelling to attend the funeral of the late senator Lindsey Graham, last of the neocons, his supporter and friend. Unofficially, he wanted to get another face-to-face meeting with President Donald Trump. But some “sources” around Trump hinted that the President would be too busy to squeeze the Israeli PM into his diary. A Trump snub would be embarrassing for Bibi, and suddenly he, too, was very busy and might not be able to make the funeral after all.
The Israeli public has soured on Trump, feeling like he abandoned the country in the middle of a war
Well, Netanyahu did fly to DC, and he’s due to meet Trump too, with an unusually long list of worries and complaints to discuss. At the top of the list: Iran, of course. On Friday, the Trump administration was briefing that the daily bombings on Iranian targets would be massively stepped up. US troops were surged back into the region, and commando raids, land invasions and a full resumption of the US-Israeli strikes were about to begin any day. Pickaxe Mountain, the vital Iranian nuclear base, would be destroyed. And then over the weekend, Trump unilaterally declared another ceasefire and the war’s off again.
Or is it? Certainly, Netaynahu hopes not, and is eager for a more sustained attempt to topple the Islamic regime. Trump though… well, it’s not clear that even Trump knows what Trump wants from Iran. He alternates between declaring complete victory, accusing the Iranians of being untrustworthy liars, and boasting that peace talks are going great. The erratic intransigence has left Israelis feeling less secure than before the spring war, with some blaming Trump and others pointing the finger at Netanyahu too.
Another theater where Netanyahu’s been feeling the heat is Lebanon. Trump already demanded Israel stop its broad military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon after Iran made it a precondition to peace talks. The IDF is still occupying a “security strip” in southern Lebanon, though, and Trump’s been pressuring Netanyahu to leave. Last week, Israeli troops pulled out of a few “pilot zones” in south Lebanon and handed them over to the Lebanese Armed Forces instead of Hezbollah, but there are already teething problems.
On Wednesday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed a deal that would give Saudi Arabia a full nuclear power program, including enrichment. Israeli security sources freaked out: any country with access to the full nuclear fuel cycle can make a nuclear bomb in a few months, and Trump had always said that the Saudis would need to join the Abraham accords and make peace with Israel before it got the nuclear goodies.
A couple of days later, Trump piped up and claimed that of course the signed, written deal with Saudi Arabia was always contingent on Saudi-Israeli normalization, even if it didn’t say that anywhere. Bibi will be hoping to convince Trump not to change his mind again.
Netanyahu’s had less luck trying to get Trump to renege on another deal: selling advanced F-35 fighter-bomber jets to Turkey. Once long-time allies, Israel and Turkey have become major regional rivals, with Turkish government ministers publicly musing about recapturing Jerusalem for the neo-Ottoman empire.
Trump, though, seems to have a genuine affection for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Asked about Netanyahu’s opposition to the F-35s deal, Trump told reporters yesterday as he boarded Air Force One: “Nobody tells me what we should be selling… Turkey’s not a big fan of Israel, not a great fan of Bibi. But they’ve been great for me.”
Trump and Netaynahu’s meeting will, no doubt, be a public show of friendship and unity against a background of reports of mutual frustration. There are regular rumors that Trump feels trapped in a conflict with Iran with no good options for getting out of it with American power intact. He’s also pressuring Bibi on a range of issues: Iran, Lebanon, and also Gaza and Syria.
During Donald Trump’s first term, Benjamin Netanyahu made his relationship with Trump the centerpiece of his election campaigns. He ran huge billboards of himself and Trump shaking hands with the slogan “Netanyahu – Another League.” Trump even intervened in the elections, endorsing Bibi and making favorable announcements to help him win, such as the Trump Peace Plan that would have allowed Israel to annex much of the West Bank.
This time round, the Israeli public has soured on Trump, feeling like he abandoned the country in the middle of a war and signed a weak deal with Iran instead. And Trump’s given some signs he wants a new Israeli leader, hinting heavily a few weeks back that Netanyahu should consider retirement. Bibi will probably squeeze out one more Trump meeting before Israel goes to the polls in October: he usually comes in for the UN General Assembly in September.
It’s possible that this is all a bluff: the new Iran ceasefire, the Netanyahu-Trump meeting, the lowering of tensions. Maybe Marines are already heading to Qeshm, Larak and Abu Musa to seize those islands from Iran and secure the Strait of Hormuz the hard way. Maybe special forces are extracting the buried uranium and ending the Iranian nuclear threat for a decade.
But that’s movie stuff, not real life. However much they smile and agree with each other for the cameras, there are growing differences between the two leaders that are getting harder to resolve and harder still to hide.
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