Benjamin Netanyahu made his seventh visit to Washington in the past 13 months from Feb. 10 to 13, 2026. Beyond a routine diplomatic trip, the visit reflected various dimensions of tensions between the U.S. and Israel — more precisely, between Donald Trump and Netanyahu — while also demonstrating not only the closeness of bilateral ties but the extent to which the two sides are seeking to keep each other in check. Indeed, the number of Netanyahu’s visits to Washington over the past year nearly matches the number of visits to Israel by senior U.S. officials, including Trump. Considering that those U.S. visits, particularly during the Gaza ceasefire period, were widely seen as efforts to keep Netanyahu under control, Netanyahu’s own trips appear increasingly aimed at emphasizing his political agenda before the Trump administration.
The image of the Israeli prime minister entering the White House through a side door on Wednesday, without an honor guard, a formal welcome ceremony or the usual press pool, stood out. While some commentators sought to frame it as a sign that formal protocol between the two leaders had given way to personal closeness, the absence of a joint press statement after the meeting more plausibly points to a serious divergence between Trump and Netanyahu, particularly on Iran. Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen, who often conveys Netanyahu’s hawkish messages to the public, said shortly before the “urgent” U.S. visit that its primary purpose was to deliver the message that negotiations with Iran are meaningless, remarks made even before Netanyahu departed. However, after the three-hour closed-door meeting, a vague statement by Trump on his Truth Social account suggesting that the diplomatic process with Iran was continuing indicates that Netanyahu did not get what he wanted on the Iran issue.
A ceasefire and reconstruction in Gaza can be seen as another file in which differences between the two sides have surfaced. As Trump prepared to host the Gaza Peace Council leaders’ meeting in Washington on Feb. 19, Israel’s latest assault on Gaza between Feb. 9 and 11, in which civilians were killed, added a new source of tension to the Gaza issue. While Trump seeks to expand the Gaza Peace Council into an alternative global platform, Netanyahu’s direct attacks on Gaza, along with assaults by armed groups cooperating with him domestically, appear aimed at provoking Hamas, which has yet to lay down its arms. Those moves stand out as openly undermining Trump’s plans. Netanyahu wants Hamas to declare total defeat and disarm to proclaim his own victory in Gaza. Trump, by contrast, appears to favor spreading such steps over time within the framework of his broader peace plan, an approach that does not align with Netanyahu’s domestic political objectives. In addition, Trump’s reported intention to include the Palestinian Authority in Gaza’s future governance is among the issues to which Netanyahu firmly objects.
Iran deadlock: diplomacy or deterrence?
It is clear that Iran was at the center of Netanyahu’s visit. His primary mission is described as seeking to block any agreement that focuses solely on uranium enrichment while disregarding Tehran’s ballistic missiles and the militia groups it supports across the region. While this may appear to be a clear and narrowly defined demand, when viewed alongside Israel’s previous positions on a potential U.S.-Iran agreement, such conditions can also be seen as factors that risk derailing the process. In the summer of 2025, when Washington and Tehran were nearing an agreement, Israel’s insistence that Iran completely end nuclear enrichment became the sole obstacle preventing a deal between the two countries. Israel is now putting Iran’s ballistic missile program on the table and pushing the U.S. to include in its negotiating framework a condition that, under current circumstances, could be seen as impossible for Iran to accept. While this move is aimed at weakening Iran’s military capacity, it is viewed by Iran as an attempt to sabotage the diplomatic process.
The driving force behind Netanyahu’s intensified efforts may be seen as the possibility that the U.S.-Iran tension could turn into a fiasco for him. In the one-and-a-half months between his Dec. 29, 2025, visit to Washington and his first trip of 2026, Israeli diplomacy worked intensively to push the U.S. toward military action against Iran, while Israeli media kept the prospect of an imminent strike constantly in the spotlight. Naturally, this created a state of heightened alert that bolstered Netanyahu’s domestic political image. Although Trump’s war rhetoric and the military buildup in the Eastern Mediterranean contributed heavily to this atmosphere, his decision to remain engaged in negotiations, a move within the bounds of what could be expected from him, ultimately undermined the political capital Netanyahu had accumulated during this period. Netanyahu’s strategy, which relied on guiding U.S. regional moves and keeping military intervention against Iran as the only viable option, began to lose traction once Trump entered the negotiation process. Consequently, Israel’s Gaza assaults and recent decisions by the Israeli Security Cabinet — widely seen as striking the final blow to the Oslo Accords, limiting the authority of the Palestinian Authority, and paving the way for illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank — can be interpreted as Netanyahu’s efforts to preserve the momentum he had gained in domestic politics through strategic internal maneuvers.
Peace council and the Gaza dilemma
The visit went beyond Iran agenda, also exposing cracks in the U.S.-backed Gaza plan. Netanyahu was already expected to attend the Gaza Peace Council leaders’ meeting on Feb. 19. However, it was reported that, following “positive” talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Oman on Feb. 6, he requested to move his visit up to Feb. 10. While comments on the successful U.S.-Iran talks may have played a role, rumors that Netanyahu did not want to be seen in the same frame with Turkish, Qatari, and Palestinian leaders at the Gaza Peace Council meeting align with observations that he is focusing on his image with Israel’s right ahead of the upcoming elections. Although he signed the council participation agreement in Washington on Feb. 10, his absence from the meeting could be seen as a sign of disagreements with Trump over Gaza.
As the U.S. pushes the second phase of its plan, rebuilding Gaza and transferring its administration to a technocratic Palestinian committee, one of the points where Trump-Netanyahu tensions have crystallized is Netanyahu’s insistence, under pressure from the right wing of his cabinet, that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed. At this juncture, Trump’s “deal of the century” vision directly clashes with Netanyahu’s “absolute victory” doctrine.
Military aid’s future: from dependence to partnership?
Perhaps the most speculated-about aspect of the visit, with the potential to deeply shape the coming period, was Netanyahu’s proposal to gradually reduce Israel’s dependence on U.S. military aid. Seen as a response to Trump’s “America First” agenda, the plan envisions replacing the $3.8 billion annual aid package with a 20-year model of joint development and direct procurement. Such a plan could be interpreted as a reflex to preserve Israel’s position in the U.S., especially after the country was left short of military munitions in the final days of the Joe Biden administration and amid the anti-Israel currents within the MAGA movement over the past two years.
The plan gives Trump a chance to safeguard American taxpayers’ money, while also providing Netanyahu with a diplomatic image of independence that could appeal to Israel’s right wing. Recently, his political investment in the rhetoric of Israel’s isolation, ideas of transforming the country into a self-sufficient “neo-Sparta economy,” and statements in recent months that “the struggle between the Jews and Rome continues,” with the Rome reference reasonably interpreted as an allegory for the U.S., can be read as preparing both his movement and Israel for the realities of a new world after the Gaza genocide. The most significant pillar of this preparation is Israel’s move toward independence from U.S. aid.
In such a situation, since the U.S. would lose its biggest leverage to deter Israel from acting on its own, and since the medium- and long-term implementation of such a plan would be quite disruptive for Israel, those who see this as Netanyahu’s political rhetoric in the shadow of the upcoming elections are not in the minority. On the morning of the visit, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that the jointly developed David’s Sling air defense system had successfully completed new tests, which is proof that, no matter how much the two sides debate the conditions of peace, their partnership in the tools of war continues.
Netanyahu returns to Jerusalem without a concrete concession extracted from the White House, leaving behind a Trump who wants to see what the negotiations with Iran might yield and a peace council preparing to pressure him on various Gaza files at the Feb. 19 meeting. Whether his habit of turning his back on the possibilities of diplomacy will have sharp consequences in the eyes of U.S. leadership and the Israeli electorate has not yet become clear, but it is no secret that Netanyahu has been accustomed to walking a tightrope since Oct. 7.
