Trump and Netanyahu — a troubled romance

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pronounced his Tuesday White House meeting with President Donald Trump a great success — even going so far as to call it one of the finest they have ever shared. Yet is that assessment to be trusted?

According to the American daily The New York Times, the Trump administration is planning to sign a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia on July 29 2026 — a deal designed to restore bilateral ties after the tensions wrought by the war against Iran.

The terms of the accord had been thrashed out over an extended period — a process originally set in motion by Barack Obama. The document initially stipulated the establishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel as a non‑negotiable prerequisite for American companies to participate in the development and implementation of the Kingdom's nuclear energy program. Under Trump, however, the talks with the Saudis were suspended because of the events that erupted in Palestine on October 7, 2023 — and were only resumed last November, during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Washington.

In spring and summer this year, the parties finalized the details and intended to submit the document to the US Congress for consideration in the very near future.

The agreement includes two classified annexes — which the administration describes as containing commercial secrets touching upon matters of national security. Naturally, the treaty enshrines the non‑proliferation of nuclear weapons — that is, it guarantees a ban on their development. At the same time, according to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has made very considerable concessions in the Saudi deal.

In particular, the agreement does not provide for strict oversight or regular IAEA inspections of the nuclear program — nor does it the Saudis to forgo the right to produce their own fuel — thereby, in theory, leaving open the possibility of creating the infrastructure needed for an atomic weapon. The comparable accord that the US signed with the UAE back in 2009 contains an additional protocol that rigidly enforces exactly those requirements now waived for the Saudis — and has gone down in history as the "gold standard" of nuclear non‑proliferation. The Trump administration plans to justify these waivers by introducing other measures — including the establishment of partnership arrangements that would allow the Americans to keep a close watch on the Saudi nuclear energy program.

Israel has greeted these US concessions with fierce indignation. Not only does the deal lack a requirement for full normalization of Saudi–Israeli relations — but it also offers no guarantee that the Kingdom's scientific and practical activities will not end up resembling those of Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on the US Congress to reject the Saudi nuclear deal — or, at the very least, to shelve it indefinitely. Yet it is entirely foreseeable that the document will give rise to sharp disputes and obstacles on the path to its final approval — a process likely to drag on for a considerable time.

The chill in relations between Netanyahu and Trump has been deepened by disagreements over Israel's Middle Eastern policy: the American President has emphatically demanded that the Israeli Prime Minister halt military operations in Lebanon and withdraw troops from that country as well as from neighboring Syria. The prospective deal with Iran makes Tel Aviv's renunciation of aggression against Beirut one of its central conditions — a concession that the Israelis are unwilling to accept.

Fulfilling Trump's demand on Lebanon would imply the collapse of Netanyahu's government policy and his personal political oblivion — with unpredictable consequences. Maintaining the status quo in Lebanon, however, guarantees that Iran will refuse not only to enter into peace talks — but also to unblock commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian-Red Sea region. In other words, Donald Trump would automatically become the author of one of the most acute and intractable international crises of the past sixty years.

How the crisis in relations between the American and Israeli leaders will be overcome is something hard to predict. Given Trump's mindset, it cannot be ruled out that in the end he may well choose to "cut loose" from his Israeli ally and lay all the blame on him for the failure to resolve peacefully the problem of restoring regional navigation.