JTA — A rejuvenated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home to Israel Thursday from Washington, having crossed off everything on his diplomatic shopping list.

Grinning photo op with US President Donald Trump? Check. Iran still a top priority? Check. Conciliation with US Vice President JD Vance and conflict with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani? Check and check. Meetings with top-level senators and with salt-of-the-earth pro-Israel Americans? Check, check and check!

Had he checked his pen, however, Netanyahu might have found that the ink was running out. To the degree that the prime minister scored public relations victories during his visit to the US this week, they all have impending expiration dates.

Netanyahu, who faces a tough reelection campaign for the elections to be held on October 27, needs to show the Israeli voters that his claimed superpower, influencing Americans to support the Jewish state, is still potent. His rivals are already making the case that his power is spent.

“Netanyahu’s expectation and hope is that Trump will establish, figuratively speaking, a re-elect Benjamin Netanyahu headquarters in Washington for the next three months,” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator under Republican and Democratic administrations who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The prime minister seemed genuinely elated on Tuesday after he and the US president met at the White House. Contrary to reports ahead of the meeting, Netanyahu said he was not seeking to pull the United States back into an all-out war. Instead, he wanted to see eye-to-eye with Trump on what happens if the talks to end the war fail.

He told ABC News in an interview he was in lock-step with Trump over the three options ahead: “One, to indeed succeed making a deal; two, to continue a blockade; three, to take military action,” Netanyahu said. “Anything that will produce the end of Iran’s nuclear program is what we want. That’s our common goal. We talked about it.”

The problem for Netanyahu is that the deal Trump seeks is anything but satisfying to Israel: The Memorandum of Understanding Vance reached in June, just weeks before the war resumed, allows Iran a stake in controlling — and even profiting from — the Strait of Hormuz,........

© The Times of Israel