Abdel Raouf Arnaout<\/p>\n
10 June 2026\u2022Update: 10 June 2026<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost influence with US President Donald Trump, a former adviser said Wednesday, citing a gradual deterioration in relations between the longtime allies.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu had “lost his standing in the eyes of the strong man in Washington,” Nir Hefetz told Israel’s 103 FM radio station.<\/p>\n
Trump \u201cwill not shed a single tear\u201d if former Israeli army chief and opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot becomes Israel\u2019s prime minister within six months, he added.<\/p>\n
The current Knesset\u2019s term expires in October, with elections expected to be held later this year.<\/p>\n
Earlier Wednesday, Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party said the Israeli premier would be a candidate in the upcoming elections.<\/p>\n
The statement came after Trump, in an interview with ABC News, raised questions about whether Netanyahu intended to run in the next polls.<\/p>\n
Hefetz said he first sensed a decline in relations between Netanyahu and Trump on Oct. 11, 2025, when US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner attended a gathering in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Witkoff mentioned Netanyahu\u2019s name, the crowd booed. I looked at Witkoff and Kushner and saw them smiling. They weren\u2019t happy, but it was clear they understood the situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an indication that Trump and those around him had grown tired of the passage of time and Netanyahu\u2019s tricks. They are political allies with a friendship that spans decades, so the rope between them did not suddenly snap, but I saw the first signs of collapse then.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hefetz added that while state interests play a role in US-Israeli relations, \u201cthere is also a very strong personal dimension.\u201d<\/p>\n
He argued that Trump\u2019s inner circle has been telling the US president for some time that Netanyahu is \u201ca major problem\u201d and that he is causing harm.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Hefetz stressed that he does not believe relations between the two have completely broken down, but rather are undergoing a slow process of erosion.<\/p>\n
Questions about the nature of ties between Netanyahu and Trump have intensified in Israel in recent days following a report by the Israeli newspaper Maariv, which claimed Trump lashed out at Netanyahu during a phone call earlier this month, allegedly calling him an \u201cungrateful bastard\u201d over rising tensions in Lebanon and accusing him of undermining ongoing negotiations with Iran.<\/p>\n
The region has remained on edge since the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran in late February, triggering Iranian retaliation against Israel and other regional countries hosting US assets.<\/p>\n
A temporary ceasefire was reached on April 8, but negotiations later stalled amid disputes over its implementation and subsequent regional developments.<\/p>\n
*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Abdel Raouf Arnaout 10 June 2026\u2022Update: 10 June 2026 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost influence with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-485893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}