BEIRUT \u2013 The biggest casualty of the U.S.-Iran deal may not be Israel\u2019s Iran strategy, but the political brand Benjamin Netanyahu spent decades building as the Israeli leader who could uniquely bend Washington to his will on Iran, analysts, former U.S. officials and diplomats say.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu shaped his political identity on an audacious assertion: that he alone could keep the U.S. and Israel in strategic lockstep on Iran.\u00a0Cultivating Republican support, he cast himself as the only Israeli leader capable of influencing successive U.S. presidents and insisted that only sustained military pressure could contain Tehran.<\/p>\n
At the height of his power, he was described by diplomats as the \u201cAmerican whisperer\u201d \u2014 the Israeli leader who could pick up the \u200bphone and ensure Washington\u2019s strategic calculus aligned with that of Israel.\u00a0No other Israeli prime minister, they note, addressed Congress as often or built such enduring political capital across the American political system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT \u2013 The biggest casualty of the U.S.-Iran deal may not be Israel\u2019s Iran strategy, but the political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,54,42,87,46,47,43,44185,40,38,41,39,4374],"class_list":["post-511676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-republicans","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511676","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=511676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}