On June 18, 2021, Benjamin Netanyahu walked to the podium of the Knesset.
He was in an unfamiliar position, one that he hadn’t been in for over a decade — the loser of a national election.
Suddenly the outgoing prime minister, Netanyahu delivered a 30-minute address in which he bitterly lambasted his successor Naftali Bennett and vowed to return to power quickly.
He also boasted of his willingness to stand up to then-US president Joe Biden on Iran, arguing that the incoming government wouldn’t have the courage to follow his lead.
“If I have to choose between tension between us and eliminating the existential threat to Israel, then eliminating the threat takes precedence,” he said. “An Israeli prime minister must be able to say ‘No’ to the president of the United States on matters that endanger our existence.”
It was a reasonable statement, and one that almost every Israeli would agree with.
A year and a half later, Netanyahu returned to power, and indeed showed himself capable of standing up to Biden, especially around the war against Hamas in Gaza.
But once Donald Trump reclaimed his old Oval Office perch, the same Netanyahu who had crowed about his willingness to stand up to the White House seemed to make the strategic decision to acquiesce to the US president’s demands, whatever they are.
It made sense in many ways. Besides the fact that Trump famously expects loyalty and is willing to exact revenge on those he sees as crossing him, an airtight partnership had much to offer.
In his first term, Trump handed Israel unprecedented diplomatic wins — moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, pulling out of hostile international bodies, and much more.
In his second term, the partnership with Trump has reaped important benefits for Israel and for Netanyahu personally. Hamas released all the hostages, and the world at least expects the terror group to follow a plan that would see it disarm. Trump overturned Biden’s restrictions on weapons shipments to Israel. He invited Netanyahu repeatedly to Washington and Mar-a-Lago, and came to Jerusalem to address the Knesset the day the last living hostages were released.
In June, Trump eventually joined Israel’s military campaign against Iran, giving Israel the firepower it needed to reach deeply buried nuclear sites and then declaring the war over. And then in February, he took the unprecedented step of partnering the US with Israel in the launch of a new round of fighting against the Islamic Republic.
No ‘No’
Yet that has come with a significant price tag. Throughout, Trump has expected Netanyahu to get in line with his plans, and the prime minister has done so.
Before he was even elected, Trump was pushing Netanyahu for a truce in Gaza and talks on ending the war. After a “tense” meeting with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff days before Trump entered office in January, Netanyahu gave the soon-to-be US president the ceasefire he sought.
Trump, along with Qatar, also engineered the end of Israel’s June 2025 campaign against Iran. After Trump had the US join in with strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, he called Netanyahu to tell him that there would be no further American attacks, and that it was time to end the war.
Netanyahu wasn’t thrilled — but didn’t say no. His displeasure was evident after Trump announced the ceasefire, as he waited eight hours before confirming that Israel had accepted the truce as well.
When Iran fired a missile at Israel in violation of the ceasefire, Netanyahu ordered a massive Israeli response, but Trump memorably shut that down as well, and didn’t keep it quiet, making sure the world knew who was really in charge.
“I’m not happy that Israel’s going out now,” the US president told reporters outside the White House on June 24. “There was one rocket that I guess was fired overboard [by Iran]. It was after the time limit, and it missed its target. And now Israel’s going out. These guys gotta calm down. Ridiculous…”
From Air Force One, Trump then called Netanyahu to tell him directly to turn his planes around.
And he didn’t stop there, publicly warning Netanyahu in an all-caps Truth Social post: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBs,” he wrote. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
Unwilling to defy Trump, Netanyahu scaled the attack back, making do with a symbolic response instead.
Trump has pressed Netanyahu into backing down on a range of other matters as well: West Bank annexation, talks with Syria’s new government, senior Qatari and Turkish representation on the Board of Peace, giving up plans to get Gazans to emigrate, apologizing to Qatar’s emir for a failed strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, and even accepting the terms of the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire that envisions Hamas disarming in stages.
And in the past two weeks, facing archenemy Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, the most dangerous terrorist force on Israel’s northern border, Netanyahu went along begrudgingly with ceasefires that Trump demanded.
Israel wasn’t part of Pakistani-mediated contacts between the US and Iran to reach a two-week ceasefire.
Trump’s decision to halt the fighting was, in fact, a rejection of Netanyahu’s unsuccessful lobbying against pausing or ending the war yet. But soon after it was announced, Netanyahu’s office conceded in a statement released only in English that “Israel supports President Trump’s decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks.”
“The United States has told Israel that it is committed to achieving these goals, shared by the US, Israel and Israel’s regional allies, in the upcoming negotiations,” the statement continued.
Israel stressed that the ceasefire “does not include Lebanon,” though according to Iran and Pakistan, the agreement very much did.
But then the guns quieted in Lebanon as well. Netanyahu had a “tense” phone call with Trump in which the US president pushed the Israeli leader to scale back attacks on Hezbollah and accept direct peace talks with the Lebanese government.
Days later, Israel agreed to a 10-day ceasefire with Hezbollah, a move which apparently also came at the behest of Trump, who was the one to announce the cessation. Residents of Israel’s north, who’d been battered by Hezbollah’s missiles, and Netanyahu’s political allies both reacted furiously to the idea that the US president’s coaxing trumped their arguments for continuing the fight.
“The fact that it is the president of the United States who is the one announcing a ceasefire only highlights how disconnected the prime minister of Israel is from the people, and from the reality of the residents of the north,” said Metula Mayor David Azoulay. “Your basic duty as prime minister of Israel is to provide security to the citizens of the state. In practice, you fail at this time after time.”
Five years after Netanyahu’s June 2021 Knesset speech, he is now the one being pilloried for being unable to stand up to a US president when needed.
“A pattern is developing where a ceasefire is being forced upon us,” said Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot, a former head of the Israel Defense Forces. “In Gaza, in Iran, and now in Lebanon.”
The price of friendship
On Tuesday, with the two-week truce in the Iran war set to expire, Trump announced that it would be extended to give Iran time to mount a proposal for ending the war, saying the leadership in Tehran was too fractured to put one together.
The announcement was an about-face for a president who had insisted that there would be no extensions, and undercut claims being telegraphed from both Israel and the US that the bombing campaign was ready to resume.
Netanyahu may not be willing to challenge Trump, but Iran certainly is. After securing a ceasefire extension by refusing to even show up for talks being led by no less than US Vice President JD Vance, it then seized container ships trying to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump has insisted it reopen to free trade.
The White House’s response — that the ceasefire does not prohibit Iran from blocking the strait to ships other than those from the US or Israel — shows the extent to which Trump is unwilling to resume fighting.
Netanyahu’s decision to hitch Israel’s future to Trump means Israel’s security is no longer in its own hands. Instead, it has been outsourced to a US president whose ability to see strategies through to completion is very much in question.
Trump has a willingness to break convention on the use of US military might. Netanyahu’s ability to keep himself and Israel in the mercurial American president’s good graces has been key in boosting Israel’s own military reach.
But Israel’s military power has also been put in check by Trump, who seems to believe that reaching formal ceasefires solves complex problems and has refused to tear them up even when their terms are publicly flouted by adversaries.
Israel’s leverage at the negotiating table is diluted by Trump’s decision to put talks in the hands of dilettante diplomats like Witkoff, who are easily swayed by empty promises.
Trump has become famous for losing interest in campaigns beyond a few weeks, looking for premature off-ramps that enemies see as the path to survival and rehabilitation. TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out, has become a guiding principle for anyone going up against him. Anyone, that is, but Netanyahu.
As the Islamic Republic thumbs its nose at Trump, refusing to open the strait or even show up to talks with the US vice president, he repeatedly extends deadlines and undermines the credibility of his threats — while placing his trust, and Israel’s security, in the hands of Pakistani leaders with long-standing ties to the Taliban and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, is left trying to sell unfinished wars to the public, promising that Israel will resume fighting on every front if the other side refuses to accept defeat at the negotiating table.
But until he can show the Israeli public that he is a prime minister who is brave enough to say “No” to Trump — and deal with the potential fallout — making good on such promises may remain out of his hands.
