Iran war drives a wedge between Trump and Netanyahu

The relationship between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu lends itself more to psychological analysis than political, after a decade in which the volatile U.S. president has alternately showered the Israeli prime minister with insults and excessive praise — sometimes almost within the same sentence. The war they launched together against Iran 100 days ago has driven them apart as the original plan dissolved: a short, successful operation with oil-related benefits, modeled on the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Beyond how the Iran war is resolved — if it is resolved — its lasting legacy could well be the rift between the two leaders.

The stalemate in the military campaign — and especially the Israeli invasion of Lebanon after Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned Shia fundamentalist militia, entered the scene — has exposed strategic differences between the two allies, which have become particularly apparent in recent days.

The climax came Monday, when Netanyahu responded with a wave of airstrikes to a prior attack by Iran, despite Trump’s request that he not do so. In the midst of the exchange of fire, the Republican insisted that he “decides everything” and Netanyahu does not: “Israel and Iran must immediately stop shooting,” he declared. While the two adversaries halted attacks — for now, they warned — the U.S. president added a remark that revealed his displeasure: Negotiations, he said, were “proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way.”

The two leaders spoke by phone on Monday. According to the news site Axios, Trump says he threatened Netanyahu with leaving him on his own if he decided to continue the war alone. “I said, ‘Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon,’” the U.S. president told that outlet.

U.S. and Israeli interests have become increasingly divergent in this conflict. Trump wants to end a campaign that is harming his economy and popularity five months before the midterm elections, and he does not hide that fact, even as he repeatedly insists it is Tehran that is desperate to reach a deal.

But Netanyahu also faces elections, at the latest in October, and cannot go to the polls without at least one strategic success to present to voters after three years of wars and mass mobilizations of reservists. Despite all the destruction Israel has caused, Hamas remains in power in part of Gaza; Hezbollah is armed and active in Lebanon; and the Tehran regime is still standing, with enriched uranium and emboldened after holding out against two of the most powerful militaries in the world.

Netanyahu, therefore, is willing to continue the fight against the Islamic Republic and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But Trump does not want the negotiations with Iran to derail: the definitive proof came last week, when Israel threatened to bomb southern Beirut and Tehran warned it was suspending talks until Netanyahu stood down. The U.S. president phoned the Israeli prime minister almost immediately. In that heated call, the American reportedly called the Israeli a “fucking lunatic,” demanding he abandon the attack so as not to jeopardize peace talks between Washington and Tehran.

Shmuel Rosner, an expert on Israel–U.S. relations and senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute, frames the recent frictions as a “conflict of interests,” not “personal disagreements.” “Obviously both have accumulated some frustration with the other, but mostly right now the U.S. government and the Israeli government want different things,” he says by phone.

For the U.S., the most important objective at the moment is “to maintain the ceasefire and not stir the waters in a way that could trigger a new outbreak of hostilities.” For Israel, it is “that its enemies should not feel they have won the war.” “It cannot, for example, allow Iran to present a new narrative in which it can fire at Israel when Israel operates in Lebanon […]. So it is a strategically very complicated situation,” Rosner says.

Conflict with the White House

As always, and even more so with Trump, messages change daily and disagreements are theatricalized for convenience. Anna Barsky, political commentator for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, noted on Monday: “At first glance,” Monday’s bombing of Iran “reflects a fierce conflict with the White House,” but “in practice the situation is more complex” and it is unclear whether Israel acted against the U.S. position or if Trump wanted to create that impression. “No one can rule out the possibility that both are true simultaneously: Trump sought to stay out of the current round of fighting, and Israel tried to make it clear to Tehran that it should not confuse U.S. restraint with Israeli weakness,” she says.

This is not the first public clash between the two leaders and allies. Trump holds a grudge against Netanyahu for backing away at the last minute from the killing in 2020 in Baghdad of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, a recollection Trump recounted as surprisingly as he did six days after Hamas’s massacre in Israel in October 2023. “I will never forget that Bibi Netanyahu disappointed us. A lot, deeply […]. But we did the job ourselves, with absolute precision... and then he tried to take credit,” he said.

When Joe Biden beat him at the polls in 2020, Trump not only took the result badly (sowing doubts about its validity), but also resented that Netanyahu was among the first leaders to congratulate the Democratic candidate. “Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty,” he said a year later in an interview.

Their years in power (they have overlapped for six) have also been, however, full of praise, even blush-inducing. Besides never missing an opportunity to call Trump “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu has also suggested he is the best U.S. president the country has ever had, for “his determination, his firmness, and his clarity of thought.” He has said not only Israel but the whole world is lucky he sits in the White House. In 2025 he formally nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for the deal that allowed Hamas to hand over its last hostages in Gaza. Even this Monday, despite the tension, Netanyahu did not forget to call him “my friend” in his address to the nation.

Trump, for his part, has said bluntly that Israel would not exist today under almost any other leader: “The relationship has been extraordinary, and Bibi’s a strong man. He can be very difficult on occasion, but you need a strong man. If you had a weak man, you wouldn’t have Israel,” he said last December. And he has been pressuring — insults included — Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to grant Netanyahu an extraordinary pardon in the three corruption cases in which he is indicted.

It was the same rapport shown at the White House meeting last February when Netanyahu argued the need to attack Iran. The Republican, still surprised by the ease with which the operation to capture Maduro had been executed a month earlier, was all ears to the Israeli prime minister, who assured him they faced a unique opportunity: that he could boast of being the U.S. president who ended the Islamic Republic, Washington’s constant nemesis since the 1979 Khomeini revolution. No one in the White House entourage wanted, or knew how to, disagree with him.

Several attempts

It was not a new suggestion from Netanyahu, who for decades has tried to persuade successive U.S. administrations that the Islamic Republic must be destroyed. “Netanyahu tried to convince us of the same thing during the Obama administration, but we decided to back the nuclear deal with Tehran (which the major powers eventually signed in 2015 and from which Trump withdrew the United States in 2018). The success of the operation that detained Nicolás Maduro persuaded Trump that regime change could be cheap and fast… But in all war simulations about Iran what ended up happening occurs: the Strait of Hormuz closes immediately and the Revolutionary Guard becomes the dominant force. Trump avoided listening to the experts, but in the end that came back to bite him,” said former deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes, in an interview with this newspaper.

Now Trump must face reality. The Iranian regime believes it has won the war merely by surviving, and it feels strengthened. “It is the first time in decades that a regional power has had the capacity, the means and the will to use (its military tools) against Israel’s maneuvers or aggression toward a third party. This is particularly significant given that Trump has signaled he seeks to restrain Israel from continuing the escalation,” explains Trita Parsi, co-founder of the think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

“From an American perspective, supporting Israel at this point in the conflict again commits the United States to a decades-long policy of seeking a regional balance that allows near-complete Israeli dominance. That policy has been extremely costly to U.S. interests, has destabilized the region, and has enabled the Israelis to become increasingly aggressive and reckless. As problematic as it has been so far, it will be even more destabilizing in the future, because maintaining Israel’s dominance will require continued war against Iran. That clearly contradicts U.S. interests,” the expert says.

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