Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump is set to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House for the seventh time during his second term, flouting the political risk of holding a high-profile meeting with the increasingly unpopular leader amid the US-Israel war with Iran.
The face-to-face on Tuesday will be the first time the two men have met since they jointly launched the war on February 28, a turn that has piqued the already growing wariness of Israel among the US public, and increasingly, within some segments of Trump’s own Republican Party.
The meeting was announced late last week, with Netanyahu already planning to travel to Washington, DC, for the funeral of US Senator Lindsey Graham. “There hasn’t been a Netanyahu visit since the war began, probably because the war so quickly devolved into a disaster that it just becomes bad optics to have Netanyahu come here,” Andrew Day, senior editor at The American Conservative, told Al Jazeera.
A slate of recent polls has shown Republican disapproval of US policy towards Israel growing. Notably, a Politico poll released last week showed just a third of self-identified MAGA voters felt the economic costs of the war with Iran were worth it. Couple that with the widespread perception that Israel pulled the US into the war, Day said, and the meeting could prove politically costly as Republicans face midterm elections.
The timing is particularly notable, with Trump signalling on Monday that Washington was pursuing a new diplomatic overture with Iran. That came after the dissolution of the June 17 memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, which had agreed to halt fighting on all fronts.
Netanyahu’s government had vehemently opposed the MoU, arguing that it strengthened Tehran’s hand. Israel has continued to push for wider regime change and a zero-tolerance policy towards Iran’s nuclear programme, in contrast to the Trump administration’s recent pursuit of off-ramps.
In June, Israeli operations in Lebanon prompted a rare rebuke from Trump and US Vice President JD Vance. Vance warned Israeli officials: “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump again made reference to the unequal relationship: “Frankly, we’re being very nice to a lot of countries that would not survive without us. And you know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel.”
However, Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera that policy hasn’t changed. “Netanyahu knows how to influence Trump,” Duss said. For Netanyahu, the benefits are clear-cut, according to Michael Omer-Man of DAWN. “Any opportunity he has to be photographed with Trump is a personal political benefit to him,” Omer-Man said.
The meeting could also address settler violence in the West Bank and the Lebanon agreement. Omer-Man noted that settler violence is a rare bipartisan issue in the US, which could be a wild card.
Source: www.aljazeera.com