How an Israeli Prime Minister Spent an American President’s Political Capital

May 2026

There is a question worth asking plainly six months before the U.S. midterms: who is actually in charge of American foreign policy in the Middle East? The polling now suggests a majority of Americans have an answer, and it isn’t Donald Trump.

In April 2026, Pew Research Center found Trump’s job approval at 34% — the lowest of his second term. His confidence rating on using military force wisely had dropped to 38%. Among his own 2024 voters, approval had collapsed from 95% in early 2025 to 78%. The decline among Hispanic Trump voters was 27 points; even among White Trump voters, it was 14.

These are not numbers a strong president posts. They are numbers a manipulated one posts. And the manipulation has a name: Benjamin Netanyahu.

The frame is no longer that Israel does what Washington tolerates. The frame is that Israel does what it wants, and Washington explains it.

The Pattern of Defiance

Start with what is documented. Across 2025 and 2026, Netanyahu has repeatedly acted against Trump’s stated preferences with no consequence:

September 2025: Israel struck Doha, Qatar — host to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East — with under an hour’s notice. Trump told Netanyahu, on a recorded phone call, “This is unacceptable. I insist that you do not do it again.” Netanyahu publicly threatened more strikes the next day. He apologized only twenty days later, on a call Trump himself had to organize.

July 2025: Trump publicly stated that the Gaza famine was “real” and called images of starving children “revolting.” Netanyahu denied widespread starvation. Trump did not order Israel to open aid corridors. He set up parallel American food centers and let Israel keep its denial.

Throughout 2025: Trump told Time magazine that Israel “would lose all of its support from the United States” if it annexed the West Bank. Israel approved a record 54 new settlements that year, finalized the long-blocked E1 project, and approved 19 more settlements in December. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich now publicly claims it was all “coordinated with the president.”

April 8, 2026: Hours after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire ending the Iran war was announced — and after Hezbollah halted its attacks — Israel called Trump, got him to retroactively narrow the ceasefire to exclude Lebanon, and struck Beirut with 50 fighter jets and 160 munitions. 357 dead. The U.S. went, in CBS News’ words, “notably silent.”

April–May 2026: Israel continued striking Lebanon during the ceasefire Trump publicly announced, including the day of his three-week extension. Axios reported Trump asked for “restraint.” Israel struck more.

This is not a record of Israeli choices being constrained by an American president. It is the opposite. It is the record of an American president learning to live with — and publicly defend — choices made over his stated objections.

Trump campaigned on ending wars. The 2026 Iran war happened on his watch, after Israeli pressure he could have refused, and his approval has not recovered.

How the Capture Works

The mechanism is simple, and Netanyahu has used it on both Biden and Trump. Tell the American president what he wants to hear; act on Israeli priorities; manage the gap with public flattery and private friction; and trust that the alliance’s structural inertia will absorb whatever damage results.

The New Republic, in late April, traced the long arc:

For most of 2017 and into 2018, Netanyahu prodded Trump to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He believed that if Trump ripped it up and imposed crippling sanctions, Iran would come crawling and beg for a better deal. In May 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew. Over the next seven years, Iran increased its uranium enrichment centrifuges from 200 to 19,000 and accumulated approximately 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity.

— The New Republic, April 2026

In other words: Netanyahu’s confident prediction was wrong, and Trump bore the cost. The same pattern recurred on Gaza in March 2025, when Israel violated the ceasefire and Netanyahu reassured Trump it was a “temporary resumption.” It wasn’t. And again in February 2026, when Netanyahu convinced Trump that Iran’s nuclear program could be “obliterated” in a short joint operation. As the New Republic put it, “the invasion failed.”

Each time, Trump trusted an Israeli read of the strategic situation that turned out to be self-serving. Each time, the American president absorbed the consequences.

What the Voters See

The clearest evidence that this dynamic is now widely understood is the polling. Voters can see what is happening, and they are punishing Trump for it — including his own coalition.

Pew’s April 2026 numbers track the damage with unusual precision. The decline in confidence on military force came almost entirely after the Iran war began. The collapse in “keeps his promises” — from 51% at his reelection to 38% — coincides with watching Trump fail to constrain an ally over a sustained period. Republican confidence in Trump’s foreign policy fell 7 points in a year. Among Trump’s 2024 voters, confidence in his ability to use military force wisely dropped 11 points.

These are not Democratic defections. Democratic numbers were already at the floor. These are Republicans and independents — the people who put him in office — recognizing that something is off.

Quinnipiac’s March 2026 poll added the gut check: only 34% approve of Trump’s handling of Iran. 59% disapprove. His overall foreign policy approval sits at 36%. These are not numbers a leader posts when his coalition still believes he is in command.

Allies don’t bet against a strong administration. The September 2025 Palestinian recognition wave by Britain, France, Canada, and Australia was a bet — and it paid out.

How the World Reads It

The most consequential effect of the Trump–Netanyahu dynamic isn’t domestic. It’s how foreign governments now calibrate their behavior.

In September 2025, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Australia — three G7 members and a Five Eyes partner — recognized a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly. They did so over the explicit, public objections of the Trump administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the moves “reckless.” The recognition went forward anyway.

This is not what alliance politics looks like under a president whose word carries weight. Allies do not openly defy a strong American administration on its highest-profile foreign policy concern. They did so because they had calculated, correctly, that the United States could not or would not retaliate.

The Palestinian recognition wave was a bet on Trump’s weakness. It paid out. The United States imposed no consequences. And the allies who placed it learned something useful: in 2026, U.S. positions on Israel can be ignored without cost.

That lesson will be remembered. It will shape how allies behave on every Middle East question for the rest of Trump’s term.

The Doha Tell

If you want one moment that captures the dynamic, return to Doha.

On September 9, 2025, Israel bombed a U.S. ally — one that hosts thousands of American military personnel at Al-Udeid Air Base, and that Trump had personally praised in May as a “great ally” during his Gulf tour. Six people died, including a Qatari security officer. Hamas’s principal targets escaped.

Trump’s response was unusual. He did not impose any cost on Israel. He did not condition future weapons transfers. He did not summon Netanyahu for public dressing-down. Instead, he signed an executive order pledging to defend Qatar — from a threat that now included a U.S. ally.

This is the gesture of a president who knows he cannot prevent the next strike, only manage the diplomatic damage of the last one. It is a defensive posture against an ally.

And the message it sent to every other capital was unmistakable: if you are a U.S. ally and Israel decides to strike you, the U.S. response will be to issue paper guarantees, not consequences. That is not the message a strong administration broadcasts. It is the message a managed one does.

The Asymmetry of Damage

Some commentators are now framing this as mutual destruction — Trump and Netanyahu “royally screwing each other over,” as the New Republic put it. The framing is partly right, but it obscures the asymmetry.

Netanyahu was already politically destroyed. He has been deeply unpopular at home for years. The August 2025 Maariv poll showed 62% of Israelis had lost confidence in his government, with only 27% retaining it. He faces corruption charges. His coalition is fragile and fading. He goes into an October 2026 election he is likely to lose. He had little political capital to begin with.

Trump came into his second term with a mandate, broad coalition support, and the political space to define a presidency. He chose to spend a portion of that capital on Netanyahu’s priorities — the Iran war, the cover for ceasefire violations, the silence on Doha, the silence on Beirut, the silence on annexation.

Netanyahu didn’t lose much because he didn’t have much to lose. Trump lost real political capital because he had it to spend. The relationship benefited Israel structurally and damaged Trump structurally. That isn’t mutual destruction. It is an asymmetric trade in which the weaker partner extracted value from the stronger one.

The damage is uneven. Netanyahu lost what he had already lost. Trump lost what he could have kept.

The Verdict the Numbers Suggest

The American foreign policy establishment has long resisted the simplest read of the Trump–Netanyahu relationship: that Netanyahu is the senior partner. The resistance is understandable. It contradicts the entire architecture of how the U.S.–Israel relationship is supposed to work — Israel as junior security partner, the U.S. as guarantor and constraint.

But the 2025–2026 record cannot be read any other way. Across seven major incidents, Israel acted on its own preferences over Trump’s stated objections. The U.S. president absorbed the political damage. He defended the choices publicly. He did not impose consequences. And he watched his own approval crater on the issues — military force, foreign policy, promise-keeping — most affected by Israeli decisions he could have prevented but did not.

There is a word for a leader whose ally repeatedly defies him without consequence and whose poll numbers collapse as a result. The polling now shows a majority of Americans, including a growing share of Republicans, have arrived at it.

Trump’s weakness is Netanyahu. The data doesn’t really permit any other reading.

Whether voters punish that weakness in November is now the most consequential foreign policy question of 2026 — and the one Trump can no longer answer through Netanyahu, because Netanyahu is the question.

Sources

Polling: Pew Research Center (April 20–26, 2026 survey of 5,103 U.S. adults; March 23–29, 2026 survey of 3,507 U.S. adults); Quinnipiac University (March 25, 2026); Maariv (August 2025).

Reporting and analysis: The New Republic (Trump–Netanyahu Iran war analysis, late April 2026); CBS News (Doha strike coverage, April 8 Lebanon strikes); Axios (Lebanon ceasefire reporting, April 23 and April 29, 2026); Time magazine (Trump interview on West Bank annexation); The Soufan Center IntelBrief (December 22, 2025); Christian Science Monitor (May 8, 2026); The New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Al Jazeera.