President Donald Trump held a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago club on 29 December 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. The meeting came after news of a US-Iran peace deal, which has strained the traditionally close US-Israel relationship.
Netanyahu's Delayed Response
It took more than a day after the Trump-Iran deal became public for Netanyahu to speak out. When he finally appeared at a press conference on Monday evening, the Israeli prime minister avoided highlighting his previously excellent relationship with the US president. “There are cases in which President Trump and I do not see eye to eye,” he said. “I am responsible for Israel’s security interests, and it needs to be done wisely.” Regarding the deal, he urged critics to withhold judgment: “We do not know what the agreement will be.”
A Fork in the Road
Netanyahu, who has dominated relations with five US presidents, now faces the prospect of Israel going it alone against Iran. This marks a significant shift from just four months ago, when his intervention and a White House presentation convinced Trump to mount a joint attack. However, Trump has since expressed frustration with Netanyahu. In a conversation with Axios, Trump said he was “so pissed off” and told Netanyahu he had “no fucking judgment.” Publicly, Trump criticized Netanyahu for launching strikes against Lebanon on the day his peace treaty was to be announced. “Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, adding that “too many people are being killed.”
Political and Strategic Divergence
For Netanyahu, who has leveraged enormous lobbying support in the US, this is a nightmare turnaround. The combined pressure of a US president eager to exit the war and an upcoming Israeli election have flipped the script, leaving Netanyahu as a potential spoiler to a grand bargain. “Let’s be clear, Trump has enormous leverage,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “No American president has ever talked to an Israeli prime minister the way Donald Trump has talked about Netanyahu. No American president has ever allowed his private conversations to be leaked and so profanity-laced and mocking.”
The deal includes politically charged unknowns, such as the potential release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets—a clause Trump previously blasted in the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal. Now, Trump has signaled his desire to exit the war he launched earlier this year, leaving Netanyahu to manage difficult political consequences. US officials have said Israeli forces would not be forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon and would have the right to defend themselves, but privately they seek to restrain Netanyahu to prevent derailing the deal.
Netanyahu's Bind
Netanyahu has led Israel in three wars—in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran—without a clear victory. Declaring peace, especially one dictated from abroad, will bolster criticism of his foreign policy as he faces a tough re-election in the autumn. Meanwhile, as the US relies on Gulf intermediaries and Pakistan to broker peace, the strategic interests of the US and Israel are diverging. “We’ve reached a fork in the road,” said Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Netanyahu sold President Trump on this action plan that went sideways quickly, and now President Trump wants to end this war as quickly as possible.”
Down but never out, Netanyahu must navigate the coming week before Friday’s signing ceremony and the subsequent months of what observers expect to be a tenuous ceasefire and difficult negotiations. With the deal terms still unpublished, Netanyahu may still hope negotiations will fail under pressure. “He’s got to figure out a way to navigate this in the next several months,” said Miller. “And I think the Iranians have figured that they have him in a box.”
