The biggest casualty of the US-Iran deal may not be Israel’s Iran strategy, but the political brand Benjamin Netanyahu spent decades constructing as the Israeli leader who could uniquely bend Washington to his will on Iran, analysts, former US officials and diplomats say.
Netanyahu built his political identity on an audacious assertion: that he alone could keep the US and Israel in strategic lockstep on Iran. Cultivating Republican support, he cast himself as the only Israeli leader capable of influencing successive US presidents and insisted that only sustained military pressure could contain Tehran.
At the height of his power, he was described by diplomats as the “American whisperer” – the Israeli leader who could pick up the phone and ensure Washington’s strategic calculus aligned with that of Israel. No other Israeli prime minister, they note, addressed Congress as often or built such enduring political capital across the American political system.
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But analysts say Washington and Tehran’s interim pact to end the war that the US and Israel launched in February shows how that narrative has been reversed. Rather than shaping Washington’s Iran policy, Netanyahu is now forced to accept it, as US President Donald Trump pursues a settlement that increasingly treats Israeli objections as constraints.
