THE WASHINGTON POST: Benjamin Netanyahu left exposed as Donald Trump tightens control over Republican Party

When previous US presidents sought to tie the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader often exploited rifts in US politics to find a friendlier ear in Washington and wriggle free from constraints placed on him.

But Mr Netanyahu is finding that there is no higher court of appeals in his faceoff with President Donald Trump, who has a viselike grip over his party - at a time when Democrats have little or no sympathy for the Israeli leader.

Mr Trump in recent days has been asserting blunt power over Israel in a way no other president has in decades, declaring on Monday that he had forced Mr Netanyahu to turn around an attack that had already been launched against Iran by telling him he would otherwise “end up alone” against Tehran.

The result is an unusually public breach between two leaders who have forged a strong alliance while often facing opprobrium from other nations. But now their domestic political agendas are diverging: Trump wants a quick end to the Iran war, while Netanyahu faces pressure to push on toward total victory against Tehran.

Mr Trump’s warning that he might withhold support for Israel was a departure from long-standing US practice of backing Israel against Iran under almost any circumstance. Mr Netanyahu played a major part in persuading Mr Trump to take part in the initial February attack on Iran.

The complex dynamic between the two leaders could help define the future of the Middle East for a generation, with each propelled by internal considerations toward different goals.

Mr Trump is seeking to wind down the Iran conflict by reopening the Strait of Hormuz and strictly limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Mr Netanyahu, meanwhile, feels he cannot leave direct attacks by Iran such as the ones this weekend unanswered, and he has faced criticism at home that he has become an American vassal.

Mr Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday that peace negotiations would soon yield a deal, “subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way,” and that both Israel and Iran want an end to the war.

Mr Trump told Israel’s Channel 12 broadcaster on Monday that he had ordered Netanyahu to stand down against Iran. “Five countries from the region approached me to pressure Netanyahu not to attack,” Mr Trump said. “I told Bibi, ‘You better be careful with what you are doing, because you might end up alone against Iran.’”

Early Tuesday, Mr Trump said Israel and Iran had agreed, at his behest, to “leave each other alone for another week,” following escalating strikes between the two countries.

Speaking to reporters at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York where he had attended Game 3 of the NBA finals, Mr Trump said: “We’re in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal that will not allow in any way, shape, or form nuclear weapons … and then the strait will open up right away.”

Mr Trump also said the pilots of a US Army helicopter that went down near the waterway were “fine,” but did not disclose what caused the crash, saying a report would be issued.

Iran attacked Israeli territory on Sunday, a move that would typically lead to an Israeli response. Mr Netanyahu ultimately hit targets in both Iran and Lebanon, where he has been fighting Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed proxy.

Mr Netanyahu, whose reputation took a major hit from Hamas’s surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, trails in the polls with Israeli elections expected by October.

The rift has been especially clear over the past week, with Mr Trump denouncing Mr Netanyahu in a phone call with the Israeli leader for threatening the shaky ceasefire with Iran.

Mr Netanyahu “won’t have any choice,” Mr Trump told the Financial Times in a telephone interview Sunday. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”

Mr Trump’s tone toward the Israeli leader is unusual, given that American presidents have historically been leery of appearing less than fully committed to Israel’s security.

“No American president has ever publicly talked about an Israeli prime minister the way Trump has talked about Netanyahu,” said Aaron David Miller, a former diplomat who is an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Trump has a degree of political leverage over an Israeli prime minister unprecedented in the history of the relationship, partly because he owns the Republican Party,” Miller said.

Mr Trump also faces domestic pressures that are at odds with Netanyahu’s priorities. Republicans are expected to suffer major losses in the November midterm elections, and those losses could be bigger if the Iran war continues and further pushes up gas prices.

The White House sought to play down any notion of tensions between the two leaders.

“President Trump has a strong relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Israel has always been a great ally to the United States,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in an email. “There has been no greater friend to Israel and a fighter for peace than President Trump.”

She added that the US-Israeli attacks on Iran have been highly successful.

For months, Mr Netanyahu has opposed a deal with Iran and publicly pushed for regime change. He has also bristled at efforts by Iran - and now Trump - to restrain Israel in Lebanon, where he has been fighting Hezbollah on and off for nearly three years.

After promising Israelis he would eliminate the threat from Hezbollah, Mr Netanyahu now faces political risks if he is seen as bending to Mr Trump’s calls for a ceasefire that includes ending the fighting in Lebanon.

So far, Mr Netanyahu has avoided commenting about his relationship with Mr Trump, a delicate issue in a country where the US president enjoys high popularity. If Mr Netanyahu publicly confirmed tensions with Mr Trump, analysts say, he might incur Trump’s wrath - or risk losing his reputation as the Israeli politician who can manage the US-Israel relationship better than any other.

Last week, after Mr Trump said he had warned Mr Netanyahu against invading Beirut and castigated him for “constantly fighting” Hezbollah, Netanyahu’s domestic rivals pounced. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister who is seeking the post again in this year’s election, said Netanyahu had “lost control of Israeli sovereignty.”

Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader and Bennett’s political ally, said Israel was a “a total vassal state” of the United States under Netanyahu’s premiership.

After Iran and Israel both called off strikes on Monday, Mr Netanyahu delivered a defiant speech, saying he still had the freedom to act in Lebanon.

“Over the past 24 hours, Iran and Hezbollah have attempted to impose a new equation on us, and this equation is intolerable and unacceptable to me,” he told the nation. “They thought they would fire from Lebanese and Iranian territory into Israel and that we would not act. That did not happen, and it will not happen.”

The tension between the two men could be a risk for them both, with Iran seeking to exploit rifts that could split Israel from its longtime backer in Washington.

At a time when many outside observers question whether the rift between Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu will be deep and long-lasting, Iran may be seeking to test the relationship, said Ted Singer, former head of Middle East operations at the CIA.

“The Iranians are capable of doing multiple things at once,” Singer said. “They’re trying to test the seam between Bibi [Netanyahu] and Trump and exacerbate frictions between them. They’re buttressing their standing with their remaining proxies, namely Hezbollah. And they’re saying to the [Persian Gulf states]: ‘Hey, don’t forget the Houthis are still there.’” The Iranian-backed Houthis have controlled a vast swath of Yemen for more than a decade.

Sima Shine, a former head of analysis at Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency, said numerous reports in recent weeks point to a genuine and increasing distrust between Mr Trump, his advisers and Mr Netanyahu.

Some of those advisers worry about Mr Netanyahu’s influence, Shine said.

“There’s a growing uneasiness around Trump that thinks Netanyahu has been able to change his mind and influence him,” Shine said. “Everyone who knows Netanyahu knows he’s manipulative, and he doesn’t want an agreement with Iran.”

But Netanyahu faces real political risks at home if he appears to be yielding to Trump on matters considered vital to Israeli security, she said.

“It’s all over Twitter; people are reposting all over Facebook the video of Bibi Netanyahu standing in the Knesset and saying, ‘The prime minister is someone who can say no to the American president’ - those were his own words,” Shine said.

While the recent back-and-forth has been especially notable, tensions between the two leaders have spilled into public view on numerous occasions, during both of Trump’s terms as president. Trump complained in 2020 that Mr Netanyahu had congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory and that he refrained from participating in Trump’s targeted assassination of the Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

During Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last year, Trump hurled an expletive on the White House lawn in front of TV cameras while describing his fury at Mr Netanyahu trying to bomb Iran even after Trump had brokered a ceasefire.

And after Mr Netanyahu bombed Qatar, a US ally, in a botched attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders in the midst of negotiations, Mr Trump forced the prime minister to apologise to the Qatari leader using a phone in the Oval Office.

In March, Mr Trump claimed he knew nothing about Mr Netanyahu’s intention to bomb Iran’s Pars gas field. US and Israeli officials have offered differing accounts of what Americans knew beforehand about the Pars strike, the Doha strike in August, and Israel’s attack on Beirut on Sunday.

Shih reported from Jerusalem.

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