Amichai Stein
Jerusalem Post, Jan. 20, 2025
“Trump and Netanyahu can deal with those challenges. These are very unique historic figures, leaders who the people support.”
US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are likely to set aside their differences to focus on the Iranian common enemy, the incoming president’s resident pollster John McLaughlin told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
McLaughlin, who had also worked with the prime minister, said the two “are going [to get] along very well” due to the fact that “they have a common enemy” – the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Iran does not like the United States and it does not like Israel, and that is why I think the alliance will get stronger.”
Netanyahu may hope that McLaughlin’s words become a reality, but the truth is that many in Israel, and also in the US establishment, fear things might turn out differently.
“If the Iranians are wise, they need to show a bit of respect – not too much – and this might lead Trump to tell the prime minister to set aside, for the moment, the idea of striking Iran,” was the tone of several sources who spoke to the Post. If that is the case, Netanyahu knows he will need to arrive well-prepared for his first meeting with Trump, which was arranged in a phone call between the two last week and is expected to take place in Washington in the following weeks.
The prime minister will try to persuade the new president to “finish the job” and give Israel bunker buster bombs which would allow Israel the operational abilities to strike deep underground targets – where some Iranian nuclear facilities are located. The prime minister will likely tell Trump: “I understand if you do not want to strike [alongside Israel] – but give us the ability to destroy the nuclear program.”
Many of Trump’s advisers, and even the president himself, are said to be “amazed” by the pager operation on Hezbollah and the Israeli strike against Iran in October that took out Iranian air defense systems, and now believe that Israel is capable of striking Iran in an operation that will not lead to a full scale war. The question is: Will it be enough to give Israel a green light?…SOURCE