Trump and Netanyahu: New Episode (Yossi Alpher - April 21, 2025)
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Was the dramatic Trump-Netanyahu White House meeting two weeks ago a turning point in the Israeli learning curve regarding Trump’s Middle East intentions? What has emerged since then in Israel-US relations?
A. Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early April with the expectation of getting a green or perhaps amber light from President Trump regarding an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. A secondary objective of the meeting from Netanyahu’s standpoint was apparently to persuade Trump to reduce or cancel newly imposed tariffs on Israeli goods. Also on the two leaders’ agenda were Syria and Gaza.
Netanyahu walked out of his meeting with Trump not only empty-handed (‘four billion a year is enough’), but with marching orders that effectively contradicted the Israeli leader’s designs and desires for the region regarding key issues: Iran, Syria, and Gaza. What emerged, to Netanyahu’s evident discomfort, were Trump tactical moves for at least temporarily reducing conflict and lowering the US military profile throughout most of the region.
Q. Since that Oval Office meeting, more-or-less direct US-Iran nuclear negotiations have commenced. Yet Netanyahu had reportedly come to Washington to persuade Trump to attack Iran. How do you explain the gap or dissonance here?
A. Trump’s envoy, man-for-all-missions Steve Witkoff, is apparently renegotiating the 2015 Obama-era Iran-nuclear deal that sufficed with reducing enrichment levels. Lest we forget, Trump in his day --egged on by Netanyahu-- first viciously maligned and then cancelled the 2015 JCPOA.
True, the original JCPOA was a bare-bones approach that ignored Iran’s missile build-up, hegemonic regional aims and open resolve to destroy Israel. It left in place an Iranian nuclear project that could be quickly upgraded. But it was doable, and it united the entire international community against Iranian military nuclear aspirations.
Now that very same much-maligned JCPOA is being renegotiated without participation by Washington’s partners in the 2015 deal: Russia, China, the UK, Germany and France. In other words, it reflects an international strategy that disdains the notion of global partnership and still ignores Israel’s basic security concerns vis-à-vis Iran beyond a partial lowering of Iran’s military nuclear profile. The new Trump approach also ignores the strategic window of opportunity to attack Iran’s nuclear project that the Israeli security community insists it opened when it decimated Iranian missile defenses a few months ago.
On the other hand, like its Obama-era predecessor, the Trump-Witkoff approach is doable, and quickly. At one and the same time diplomatic, tactical, pragmatic and short-term, it could well produce partial but beneficial results for everyone concerned, including Israel. The Israeli approach, which Trump has at least temporarily rejected, is strategic, a military long-shot, and would likely endanger regional stability, particularly for the Persian Gulf countries that could bear the brunt of an Iranian retaliation.
Both the Trump and the Netanyahu approaches reflect a short-term and shallow attitude toward Israel’s real strategic needs on the part of two leaders known for twisting the facts to fit their requirements and whims. Trump’s approach prioritizes a reduction in potential US military requirements in the Middle East, possibly at Israel’s expense. Netanyahu’s reflects his over-riding need for at least some level of regional conflict to distract the Israeli public and his coalition from his personal-political difficulties at home, at least until 2026 Knesset elections.
Nachum Barnea summed up Trump and Netanyahu, following their DC summit, in Yediot Aharonot:
This is Trump. The joint air exercises, the aircraft and air defense systems that arrived here, thousands of hours invested in joint planning, the threats to open the gates of hell, the compliments to Netanyahu--all these were no more than a message to Iran: I’m ready for a deal.
Where we are going it is early to tell… but the process of Israel’s sobering up from Trump has to commence. If we did not get this in the Oval Office, we have understood nothing.
Q. Trump seems to have invoked a negotiation rather than confrontation strategy regarding, as well, the Turkish military presence in Syria that troubles Israel.
A. And regarding the US military presence in Syria, which Israel values and Trump is already reducing. Whereas Israel sees Turkish President Erdogan with his Islamist ambitions for Syria as an alarming danger, Trump praises Erdogan effusively and sees Turkey as a worthy replacement for the American military in maintaining stability, with reduced US risk, in and around Syria and in neighboring Iraq.
One immediate outcome of the Netanyahu-Trump meeting two weeks ago is Israeli-Turkish discussions of stability in Syria, held in Baku, Azerbaijan. As with Iran, this could provide a helpful short-term fix. But it does not address the basic threat to Israel posed by Ankara-led militant Islam.
Q. And Gaza and the hostages?
A. As with the Russia-Ukraine conflict (where Secretary of State Rubio is threatening to withdraw Washington’s mediation efforts since they cannot produce a Trump-style quick fix), gone in Gaza are the bombastic promises of quick solutions and the dramatic visits of Trump emissaries. Israel and Hamas are as far apart as ever.
The latest Israeli offensive began a month ago. That Israel just recorded its first IDF fatality bears witness to a very cautious Israeli approach that inevitably favors heavy Palestinian civilian casualties caused by IAF airstrikes. The absence of parallel IDF casualties is welcomed by the Israeli public. And it allows the IDF Spokesman to herald the elimination of this or that Hamas battalion leader and ignore the awful collateral damage as well as the fact that that battalion leader’s two predecessors were also ‘neutralized’ over the past 18 months with no effect whatsoever on the course of the war.
Hamas, along with a sizeable portion of the Israeli public and security veterans, insists that the only realistic deal is for Israel to end the conflict and withdraw from the Strip in return for all the remaining hostages, alive and dead. But this falls well short of the ‘total victory’ that Netanyahu insists Israel needs if the PM is to stay alive politically.
No wonder Trump and Witkoff are keeping their distance from Gaza. They can concentrate their efforts on more productive ventures with a short-term payoff: Iran and Syria/Turkey. No wonder Netanyahu, his coalition and their messianist supporters among the Israeli public can assume that the smaller the number of hostages still alive (21 at last count), the less pressure will be exerted on Netanyahu to live up to both Zionist and basic human values and give priority to their release.
If ‘total victory’ - meaning eliminating Hamas - were possible, Netanyahu’s hard line might sound vaguely practical. But, as yet another Gaza offensive by the IDF is demonstrating daily, the Islamist-barbaric Hamas is effectively implanted in Gaza as a grass-roots guerilla force. Moreover, the Netanyahu coalition has no Palestinian replacement to offer; and no one in Israel will accept the cost in IDF deaths and Gazan civilian deaths that would be incurred in the pursuit of an elusive complete conquest and reoccupation of the Strip.
Q. Bottom line?
A. Netanyahu, still the master politician in the Israeli context, managed to walk away from the Trump ‘hazing ceremony’ a fortnight ago declaring that all is well. Despite total failure in recruiting Trump’s backing for his Middle East objectives and the diplomatic isolation this implies, there were no cracks in Netanyahu’s coalition backing.
Of course, it helps that Trump can be expected to contradict himself any day regarding the Middle East issues at stake. And it helps Netanyahu that the political opposition in Israel is again proving ineffective and is fumbling the current opportunity provided by his bumbling international isolation.