Netanyahu's campaign against Iran's nuclear program is muted with Trump in power

JERUSALEM — When the U.S. and Iran met for nuclear talks a decade ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed against an emerging deal from the world's most public stages, including in a fiery speech to Congress seen as a direct challenge to the Obama administration as it was wrapping up the talks.

Now, as the sides sit down to discuss a new deal, Netanyahu has fallen silent.

Netanyahu sees an Iran with nuclear weapons as an existential threat to Israel, and he is just as wary of any new U.S. agreement with its archenemy that may not meet his standards. Yet he finds himself shackled with Donald Trump in the White House.

Netanyahu is unwilling to publicly criticize a president who has shown broad support for Israel, whom he deems to be Israel's greatest friend, and who doesn't take well to criticism.

He ''can't do anything that goes against Trump. He's paralyzed,'' said Yoel Guzansky, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based think tank.

Israel is in a position of power against Iran after a series of strategic achievements over the past 18 months in the wars that have shaken the Middle East. It thrashed Iran's allies in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, and directly attacked Iran last year, neutralizing some of its key air defenses. Experts say Israel now has a window of opportunity for what could be an effective strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, with possibly less regional blowback.

Yet Israel's leader was recently unable to galvanize Trump to prioritize a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities — which would likely hinge on U.S. military assistance to be successful. With the U.S. negotiating with Iran, Israel has little legitimacy to pursue a military option on its own.

''Netanyahu is trapped,'' said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. ''He was banking on Israel's position relative to Iran to improve under Trump. In practice, it's the opposite.''

Netanyahu hoped for alignment with Trump on Iran

Netanyahu and his nationalist supporters hoped Trump's return to the White House would be advantageous because of his history of support for Israel. They thought that, under Trump, the U.S. might back a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Trump's approach to Iran — as well as on other issues, such as tariffs — has shown the relationship is more complicated, and that Trump's interests don't entirely align with Netanyahu's.

Netanyahu has long accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapon and went on a global campaign against the Obama deal. He painted the nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel and the world, and said the agreement was too weak to contain it. Israel remains the Mideast's only nuclear-armed state, an advantage it would like to keep.

With Netanyahu's strong encouragement, Trump backed out of the deal struck by Obama. And since returning to the White House, Trump has given Israel free rein in its war against Hamas in Gaza, been soft on the worsening humanitarian crisis in the territory and launched strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have attacked Israel since the start of the war.

But now that the U.S. has returned to the negotiating table with Iran, Netanyahu would risk jeopardizing his good ties with the president if he were to publicly oppose one of his administration's key foreign policy initiatives.

The last time Netanyahu crossed the temperamental Trump was when he congratulated Joe Biden for his election win in 2020. Trump was apparently offended by the perceived disloyalty, and their ties went into deep freeze.

Israel is communicating to Washington its priorities for any deal. As part of that, it understood that should Israel choose to carry out a strike on Iran, it would likely be doing so alone — so long as negotiations were underway, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Netanyahu is hoping for a strict deal on Iran's nuclear program

In a speech in Jerusalem this week, Netanyahu said he had discussed his terms for a deal with Trump. He explained that it would need to dismantle all the infrastructure of Iran's nuclear program and that it should work to prevent Iran from developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering a bomb.

"I said to President Trump that I hope that this is what the negotiators will do. We're in close contact with the United States. But I said one way or the other – Iran will not have nuclear weapons,'' he said.

Netanyahu has said he would favor a strict diplomatic agreement similar to Libya's deal in 2003 to destroy its nuclear facilities and allow inspectors unfettered access. However, it is not clear if Trump will set such strict conditions — and Iran has rejected giving up its right to enrich.

The Trump-led talks with Iran began earlier this month and have advanced to expert discussions over how to rein in Iran's nuclear program and prevent it from being able to obtain atomic weapons, should it choose to pursue them. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes, though some officials increasingly threaten to pursue the bomb.

While Trump has said a military option remains on the table, and has moved military assets to the region, he says he prefers a diplomatic solution. Planned talks between Iran and the United States this weekend were postponed on Thursday.

Netanyahu will also struggle to criticize a deal once one is clinched

Since Trump scrapped the Obama-era agreement in 2018, Iran has ramped up its nuclear enrichment and increased its uranium stockpile.

Netanyahu's 2015 speech to Congress against Obama's deal — at the invitation of Republicans — was made without consulting the White House. Obama did not attend.

That was just one of many instances in which Netanyahu was seen as cozying up to Republicans, driving a wedge in what has traditionally been bipartisan support for Israel. That, coupled with Netanyahu's strained relationship with the Biden administration over Israel's conduct in Gaza, has meant that Netanyahu can't rely on Democratic allies to take up his cause.

Still, Netanyahu would struggle to find any Republicans willing to publicly confront the president on this issue. And he himself will struggle to criticize a deal if one is clinched; instead, he might send surrogates like his far-right allies to do so, said Gilboa of Bar-Ilan University.

But until then, Gilboa said, Netanyahu's best hope is that the talks fail.

''That, for him, will be the best case scenario.''