Netanyahu’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme muted with Trump in power
Jerusalem: When the US and Iran met for nuclear talks a decade ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed against an emerging deal from the world’s most public stages, including in a fiery speech to Congress seen as a direct challenge to the Obama administration as it was wrapping up the talks.
Now, as the sides sit down to discuss a new deal, Netanyahu has fallen silent. Netanyahu sees an Iran with nuclear weapons as an existential threat to Israel, and he is just as wary of any new US agreement with its archenemy that may not meet his standards. Yet he finds himself shackled with Donald Trump in the White House.
Netanyahu is unwilling to publicly criticise a president who has shown broad support for Israel, whom he deems to be Israel’s greatest friend, and who doesn’t take well to criticism.
He “can’t do anything that goes against Trump. He’s paralysed,” said Yoel Guzansky, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based think tank.
Israel is in a position of power against Iran after a series of strategic achievements over the past 18 months in the wars that have shaken the Middle East. It thrashed Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, and directly attacked Iran last year, neutralizing some of its key air defences. Experts say Israel now has a window of opportunity for what could be an effective strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with possibly less regional blowback.
Yet Israel’s leader was recently unable to galvanize Trump to prioritise a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities — which would likely hinge on US military assistance to be successful. With the US negotiating with Iran, Israel has little legitimacy to pursue a military option on its own. “Netanyahu is trapped,” said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on US-Israel relations at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “He was banking on Israel’s position relative to Iran to improve under Trump. In practice, it’s the opposite.” Netanyahu hoped for alignment with Trump on Iran
Netanyahu and his nationalist supporters hoped Trump’s return to the White House would be advantageous because of his history of support for Israel. They thought that, under Trump, the US might back a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. But Trump’s approach to Iran — as well as on other issues, such as tariffs — has shown the relationship is more complicated, and that Trump’s interests don’t entirely align with Netanyahu’s.
Netanyahu has long accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapon and went on a global campaign against the Obama deal. He painted the nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel and the world, and said the agreement was too weak to contain it. Israel remains the Mideast’s only nuclear-armed state, an advantage it would like to keep.
With Netanyahu’s strong encouragement, Trump backed out of the deal struck by Obama. And since returning to the White House, Trump has given Israel free rein in its war against Hamas in Gaza, been soft on the worsening humanitarian crisis in the territory and launched strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
