Trump Intervenes in Israel’s Election as Netanyahu Threatens New Iran War
Donald Trump has placed the weight of the White House behind Benjamin Netanyahu on the eve of Israel’s election, while the prime minister has turned that endorsement into a threat of renewed war and regime change in Iran.
The intervention strips away any pretence that Tuesday’s vote concerns Israel alone. Trump told Israelis on Sunday to vote for Netanyahu, declaring: “We have to finish the job that we started.” Netanyahu then argued that only his continued rule could keep Trump committed to removing what he called the Iranian threat.
That is not an ordinary endorsement. It is an American president asking voters in another country to preserve a partner for a military campaign whose costs are already moving through the region: dead civilians, shattered infrastructure, disrupted shipping and higher fuel prices.
Reuters reported on October 26 that Netanyahu said he had instructed Mossad and the Israeli military to bring down Iran’s government. He presented Trump’s backing as a unique strategic asset and suggested the two leaders could restart the war they launched in February if he wins.
The White House did not disavow that threat. Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said the blockade on Iran would remain in force and that the United States would not attack before its November 3 midterm elections. The deadline offers a pause on a calendar, not a renunciation of war.
Archive photograph: The Knesset building in Jerusalem, November 15, 2022. Hagai Agmon-Snir / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Netanyahu’s message is brutally simple: re-elect me and Washington will help finish Iran. It turns foreign policy into a personal compact between two leaders and treats millions of people—from Tehran to Tel Aviv and across the Gulf—as background figures in an electoral bargain.
The campaign has made fear its central instrument. Netanyahu posted a computer-generated image of a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv and circulated an AI video depicting Iran’s supreme leader in a hospital bed. His main challenger, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, accused him of campaigning through fear, lies and threats.
The irony is sharp. The politician warning that only he can keep Israel safe is asking for another term in the first national election since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack—the worst security failure in Israel’s history. Netanyahu has rejected personal responsibility and resisted demands for an independent investigation.
Tuesday’s vote therefore carries two competing verdicts. Netanyahu wants Israelis to judge him as the man who can command Trump’s support and keep striking Israel’s enemies. His opponents want a reckoning for the failures, polarization and wars that have marked his rule.
Polls suggest Likud will lose seats and Netanyahu’s right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox coalition may lose its narrow parliamentary majority. But the opposition also lacks a clear path to govern. Israel could remove Netanyahu’s majority without removing Netanyahu, producing negotiations, defections or another deadlock.
The Washington Post described Trump’s campaign intervention as without precedent for a sitting U.S. president. It also reported that Trump has pressed Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu in his corruption trial. The endorsement is therefore not only about Iran. It reaches into Israel’s election, its courts and the political survival of one man.
Trump’s own domestic timing matters. The Iran war is deeply unpopular in the United States, where it has been blamed for rising fuel prices. His administration says no attack will come before Americans vote on November 3. Netanyahu is telling Israelis that the machinery can start again after that date.
This is how permanent war reproduces itself. Leaders manufacture a deadline, pause the bombing, keep the blockade, preserve the fleets and then sell the next escalation as unfinished work. Elections become plebiscites on who can prosecute the conflict more ruthlessly, not whether the conflict should continue.
Israeli voters will decide their parliament on Tuesday. But Trump and Netanyahu have already defined the stakes beyond Israel’s borders. A vote for political continuity is being marketed as authorization for another regional war—and for the belief that two leaders can decide, between them, when millions of people must pay its price.
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