Netanyahu’s Persistent Advocacy for Strong Israeli-U.S. Relationship: What Is Next for Both Countries With Changing Middle East Landscapes?

Since coming to office the first time in 1996, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has met with four presidents (Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden) on 11 occasions. Four times he has addressed Congress, each time emphasizing some aspect of Israeli security needs: strengthening the bilateral relationship; the hazards of Iran’s nuclear program and particularly his country’s opposition to the U.S.-proposed negotiated understandings with Tehran (2015); and reiterating Israel’s thanks to the U.S. in supporting its security needs fighting Hamas, Hezbollah and their patron Iran (2024). 

Netanyahu and his predecessor prime ministers have strongly advocated for American provision of support of Israel’s security needs while also stressing that Israel alone must make the final decisions on matters of Israel’s security and Jerusalem’s management of relations with the Palestinians. 

Netanyahu’s early February 2025 visit to Washington will likely focus again on Israel’s Iranian nemesis as well as the recent changes in the regional landscape in the Gaza Strip, in Lebanon (Hezbollah’s decapitation) and in Syria (the fall of the Assad family regime after 54 years). The meetings and final communique or press conference will undoubtedly affirm the Washington-Jerusalem hand-in-glove relationship as both countries seek to set out political options that aim to  limit or prevent Iran and its proxies from reconstituting their military strengths to where they were before the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war in October 2023. 

In addition to discussions on Israeli security with its neighbors and evolving strategies and plans vis-a-vis Iran, hanging in front of both countries will be the possible expansion of the Abraham Accords between Israel and other Arab Gulf states and whether Trump’s 2020 plan for a two-state solution, with multiple requirements demanded of the Palestinians, will be dusted off, forgotten or have portions reconsidered. 

Trump and Netanyahu are likely to disagree on whether ‘forever’ Arab/Muslim conflicts with Israel can end with transactional understandings between parties. Netanyahu will likely remind Trump that Israel is fighting against perennial  wars of attrition, which can be pleasantly interrupted by accommodations, treaties and truces while regional ideologies persist and are promoted to destroy the Jewish state.

Ken Stein, January 31, 2025