Two looming elections are shaping the Middle East war/peace agenda. Donald Trump is contemplating a likely congressional midterm thrashing in the wake of a humiliating peace deal with Iran, and in Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu is seeing the prospect of his Knesset majority evaporating in an October general election. Both events are focusing minds on the collapse in the two men’s once-vaunted relationship.

Trump’s once-automatic endorsement of Bibi is now unlikely. He’ll have “to look at who’s running”, Trump told one TV interviewer, while he has – according to a report in Axios – described him as “f**king crazy”, “ungrateful”, “no judgment” and needing to be “more responsible with respect to Lebanon”. Public declarations that “Netanyahu will do whatever I want him to do” have enraged the Israeli public – and proven patently untrue.

Israel’s more-off-than-on promises to end its war on Lebanon and its continued occupation of the south are the problems for Trump. Netanyahu would prefer the war to continue, not least so he can keep insisting that “total victory” is just around the corner. At the very least he would like it to continue until just after the 22-week election countdown, so he can keep thumbing his nose at the court trying him for corruption by requesting endless adjournments for “urgent” national security reasons.

“If we had not acted, all of you would have been in danger of mass death. All of us were in that danger,” Netanyahu........

© The Irish Times