Inside Trump and Netanyahu’s Complicated Relationship

0:05Ryan Knutson:Lately, President Donald Trump has been increasingly critical of one of America's closest allies. Without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel. More specifically, Trump has been calling out Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. — I've had a great relationship with Bibi, but now Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon. That's Trump at a press conference last week. He went on to criticize Netanyahu's tactics against one of Iran's allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah. — And too many people are being killed. And you don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody.

0:48Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they're not all Hezbollah.

0:52Ryan Knutson:Their conversations in private have gotten heated, too. At one point, Trump told Netanyahu over the phone that he was, quote, effing crazy. Why is the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu important? Well, it's important because, A, it's one of, you know, the United States' top allies, and B, the two men have been prosecuting this war together in Iran for the last four or five months. That's our colleague Josh Dossie. They went in together. Netanyahu was critical. to convincing the president that it was a good idea. The troops have been fighting together, and sort of how this winds down, the relationship between those two men, is integral to figuring out what happens next in the Middle East.

1:41Ryan Knutson:Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Tuesday, June 23rd.

1:53Ryan Knutson:Coming up on the show, Inside the Complicated Relationship Between Trump and Netanyahu.

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3:18Ryan Knutson:Can you tell me about the history of this relationship between President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu? When does it begin? I was in the first term. The two men were in close touch and, you know, talked a lot about military operations. But President Trump said near the end of his first term that he was frustrated that Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden in 2020 for his win and did not parrot the president's false claims of election fraud. And the two men in the out-of-office years, I don't think, talked all that regularly. But when President Trump came back in office, Netanyahu was very careful to create strong ties with him.

3:57He visited Washington repeatedly. And Netanyahu calls Trump Donald. That's correct, yes. And a lot of the other world leaders don't do that. That's a different thing. It certainly speaks of the familiarity of their relationship.

4:12Ryan Knutson:During one of Netanyahu's visits to Washington, just a few weeks after Trump's inauguration, Netanyahu came bearing a gift. He brought him a gold pager that was supposed to be like the pagers that the Israelis used to blow up Hamas operatives. Back in 2024, Israeli intelligence hid explosives and pagers that Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon were using and then blew them up. It was sort of viewed as an intelligence coup by the Mossad. A lot of folks were sort of wowed by how do they do that, including the president. I interviewed Senator Lindsey Graham, who said to me that the president was just sort of dazzled by this pager operation.

4:54So when Netanyahu visited the White House last year, he brought a gold pager and gave it to President Trump as a gift to show him, this is how the pager looks and here's one in your trademark color, gold. And the president really loved that gift.

5:10Ryan Knutson:That's an interesting present. Here's a gold version of the thing that we use to blow up our enemies. It is a curious present. I don't know if there's anything else you can say besides that. Do you know where he keeps it? I don't know where he keeps it, though I do know that he showed it off to multiple visitors. As you know, he keeps all sorts of trademark kind of gifts that various CEOs and folks give him in the White House. And the pager is something that he regularly shows people.

5:40With all this attention, Netanyahu had an objective.

5:44Ryan Knutson:He wanted to convince Trump to take military action against Iran. Netanyahu has wanted, you know, for a long time, he's tried to convince other U.S. presidents to do this as well, and they've never gone for it. I mean, that was Netanyahu's goal. That was his, you know, dream, to get Trump to go along with him on this sort of major expedition. Trump was open to it. President Trump was certainly frustrated with the Iranians. And he came back in in the second term, I think, more willing than he ever was in the first term to have, you know, sustained military conflict with them. And I think Netanyahu used that as an opportunity.

6:19And I think in one way, their interests were more aligned here because the president was more confident in the military, was more willing to take on Iran in a forceful way.

6:28Ryan Knutson:A year ago, before the war started, the U.S. worked with Israel to bomb nuclear targets in Iran. The U.S. hit three nuclear sites in Iran overnight. President Trump is claiming success after the U.S. airstrikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites over the week. But Netanyahu wanted more from the U.S. Through the fall and winter, Netanyahu kept lobbying the president, showing him intelligence reports, and pushing him to take on Iran long term. One of the things that was striking to us in the reporting of the story was just how often the two men talk. I mean, we had people both close to Netanyahu and close to President Trump who say, you know, they often talk almost every day, if not every day, right?

7:09He talks to Netanyahu more than he does any other world reader. And that was sort of striking to us because in the fall and in the winter, the prime minister, maybe Netanyahu, was really using these phone calls, you know, to push for a more sustained conflict from the 12-day war that happened last year.

7:28Ryan Knutson:Early this year, Netanyahu returned to Washington for what would turn out to be a highly consequential meeting. Netanyahu and his team came to the White House and they all ended up down in a situation room where he was showing him Israeli intelligence. There were top officials from the United States side and the Israeli side looking at this intelligence and the other folks in Trump's orbit, But, you know, Secretary of State, various top aides were more skeptical of the Israeli plan and the Israeli intelligence and President Trump was. And it was sort of a seminal moment in the lead up to this war.

8:08Why? He was a guy who ran in 2024 on no new wars. He's sort of been against fraud intervention in a lot of ways. And one of the things that came through in our conversations with our sources, Lindsey Graham and others told us that Netanyahu convinced the president, you know, that it would work well, that there would be the confidence of the U.S. military, confidence of the operation. That meeting in the Situation Room, along with a number of other phone calls that Netanyahu had with Trump, I think helped, you know, push him over the edge to go forward in the war in Iran.

8:41Ryan Knutson:Trump had been frustrated by stalled negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. And he was feeling emboldened after his success for moving Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. So he decided to attack Iran. The United States and Israel have launched what President Donald Trump has called major combat operations in Iran. The U.S. and Israel carrying out an unprecedented military operation crippling Tehran's leadership by taking out Iran. So Netanyahu gets Trump on board. And then at the end of February, Israel and the U.S. attack Iran. How would you characterize their relationship at that point? It was the apex of their relationship, right?

9:20They were talking every day. They were sharing notes. They, I think, were both happy with how things were going in the early days and weeks of the war. They were able to take out Iranians' top leadership pretty quickly. They were destroying naval ports. They were destroying, you know, Air Force areas. There was little defense originally from the Iranians. And it looked like a military campaign that was working.

9:45Ryan Knutson:You said they were talking every day. What were they talking about? Yeah, a senior person in the White House said to me that they had on all these calls, a lot of them are BB saying, you know, here's how we should blow something up. Here's how our intelligence can do it. Here's what it would, you know, mean to the Iranians. Here's how it would hurt them. Here's how it would pressure them. and trying to convince the president to do it. Energy infrastructure, other things that even the president originally did not think were smart moves by the U.S. And so this person was saying to me that BB always comes in with, you know, a plan of what should we bomb next, and here's how we know it will be effective, and here's what we will do.

10:26Ryan Knutson:Okay, so when did their relationship start to deteriorate? Well, they've started to change in recent weeks. I think the president is coming under a lot of heat domestically for what's going on with the United States economy, what's going on with gas prices, what's going on within the 50 states, right? A lot of Republicans splintering even on the war, a lot of frustration from all CEOs and others in the business community about the closed straight of Hormuz, and a lot of sort of just malcontent that there's no sort of endgame that looks great for the United States. The president has started looking more for a deal, right?

11:07Some way to end this for himself, to end this for the country, head of the midterms.

11:14Ryan Knutson:Netanyahu, on the other hand, wants to keep fighting. And maybe Netanyahu was less interested in some sort of deal with the Iranians. Netanyahu was more committed to, you know, destroying all the sites, getting all the materials, You know, really making the Iranians hurt in a way that I think the president, you know, was more interested in, you know, what's secure reopening the strait? Let's get them to say they won't have any more nuclear weapons. And so what you're seeing really is Netanyahu sort of in the same kind of position he was at the beginning of the war. And President Trump is ready for a big change.

11:54Ryan Knutson:That's after the break.

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13:08Ryan Knutson:A little over a week ago, President Trump was working on a new ceasefire deal with Iran. But Netanyahu and the Israelis didn't know about it. Netanyahu was not part of the conversations and he did not understand that the United States was about to sign this deal. The Israelis believed that they were more likely to do more strikes instead of the deal. And initially they don't even give a text of a memorandum of understanding. They don't even know what it says. Netanyahu was fiercely trying to get a meeting with President Trump, who's going overseas for the G7 and has all sorts of surrogates and allies reaching out to the president to express concern about the deal.

13:46And the president's pretty resolute. You know, I want a deal.

13:50Ryan Knutson:Trump, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu because Israel continued to bomb Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. Israel has just carried out strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs. Israel has bombed sites in southern Beirut, killing at least three people. These strikes in Lebanon, what was the significance of that, and why did that upset President Trump? Well, it upset the president because he was on the cusp of striking a deal with the Iranians. And what he's afraid is going to happen is it's going to blow up the entire calculus, right? And that the Iranians are going to be less likely to make a deal with these missiles flying, you know, back and forth, right?

14:27So what you're seeing happen this day, he's trying to get these terms of a deal with the Iranians. And Netanyahu is on a different page and, you know, is launching kinetic action. And the president is apoplectic about it.

14:41Ryan Knutson:On Saturday, June 13th, Trump spoke with Netanyahu over the phone. And according to Josh's sources, Trump scolded him for bombing Beirut and accused him of trying to sabotage the agreement. The next day, Josh called Trump on his cell phone. On Sunday, his birthday, I actually called him in the morning because I saw he had posted about the strikes in Lebanon and his upset is him not wanting the strikes in Lebanon. And I said, if he's posting on this on Truth Social, So, you know, I'm going to call him and see if he wants to say anything. And he didn't answer. And then three or four hours later, he called me back.

15:19Ryan Knutson:As the White House was getting ready for a UFC fight on the South Lawn. The White House is decked out for a UFC extravaganza to help commemorate America's 250th anniversary. Trump surprised Josh with some news. He'd reached a deal with Iran. And he said, oh, we have this deal with the Iranians, you know, XYZ. And the president often speaks in sort of, you know, hyperbole. And sometimes you have to figure out what's actually going on and what's actually true. And I wanted to ask him about, you know, Netanyahu. But he instead, you know, was basically breaking the news to me that we actually have this deal.

15:53And so we talked about it for a little bit. I reported that to my colleagues. You know, I just got fun with President Trump. He says there's this deal with the Iranians. And then we proceeded with a story that afternoon sort of about the terms of the deal. U.S. and Iranian officials said Sunday that they've agreed on a framework to end months of war. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon.

16:20Ryan Knutson:And did you ask Trump about his relationship with Netanyahu? Yeah, I did. I said, I asked him, you know, if he was frustrated with the Lebanon stripes. And he said my relationship with Netanyahu has been very good, but, you know, he gets carried away sometimes and it works to a disadvantage. Trump said Israel's decision to bomb Lebanon the day before was a mistake. The reason you sort of could never have peace in the Middle East, according to the president that afternoon, was, you know, this side fires missiles and the other side has to fire back. I mean, you just have, you know, missiles, missiles, and we got to stop it, right?

16:54And that's something that he had told Netanyahu several times over the course of the war when he was frustrated. Stop blowing up these buildings in Lebanon. Stop doing this. Stop doing that.

17:05Ryan Knutson:So Trump got this deal with the Iranians, but is Israel going to go along with it? That's a good question. I don't think we know how this is all going to play out, right? They're having all these technical discussions right now, his top advisors and the Iranians. And, you know, if he proceeds on this track and Netanyahu and the Israelis really dislike the terms of a deal, do not think they keep him safe, you know, think the president is going into something that he shouldn't, what will they continue doing? Will they do something unilaterally? I think that's a question. I mean, the president said to me on the phone about Netanyahu and basically said, I'm in charge here and he's not.

17:42But does that dynamic stand if the two men are at divergent odds?

17:46Ryan Knutson:I mean, obviously for Israel as well, like this is so much more existential. I mean, Iran is a country that has been saying for years, this regime, you know, death to Israel. And it has these proxies in the area that are within striking distance. You know, this is their neighborhood. Yeah, that's what the Israelis say. The Israelis say that, you know, their concerns are not, you know, gas prices of the United States, right? I mean, I'm not saying they want them to be high, but they're saying we've got these people right near us who can send missiles into us to go get a nuclear weapon who want us dead.

18:15And they care more about the particular terms, I think, in some ways than the president does.