The meeting between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu at White House on 12 Feb 2026 was important in the context of a US-Iran deal. The outcome of the meeting was eagerly awaited. At the end of the meeting, both leaders avoided a joint press conference, but President Trump, through social media, informed the world that "negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program[me] will continue and finding a deal remains his preference."

The current leader-to-leader Trump-Netanyahu contact was projected in American media as similar to the one that existed between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill of Britain during World War II. Like Churchill, who demonised Nazi Germany, Netanyahu also frames Iran as an existential threat and directly appeals to the American president to join in a civilisational struggle to counter this threat. However, the key difference in this analogy is structural. Churchill's Britain was a victim, fighting an invasion, and it stood up alone against a continental superpower. Netanyahu's Israel is the dominant power and the aggressor. Netanyahu uses Churchillian rhetoric, but the geopolitical structure doesn't put the leader-to-leader contact between Trump and Netanyahu in the same Roosevelt-Churchillian league.

Netanyahu is not the only leader in a 'Churchillian mode' in the world today. President Zelensky of Ukraine is also someone who has already copied Churchill's famous 4 June 1940 speech in which he explained to the British people how he would expel the Nazi invader. Back in March 2022, President Zelensky addressed the British Parliament via video link and used........

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