Netanyahu's quiet visit to Washington highlights Trump's frustration with the leader

President Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday. And for the first time since the start of the Iran war, he also held a face-to-face meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lindsey Graham was remembered as a tireless fighter for South Carolina and an influential fixture on the world stage during a memorial service in Washington.

President Trump eulogized Graham after hosting two of Graham's strongest international allies, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Netanyahu's quiet visit to Washington highlights Trump's frustration with the leader Israel is just under three months out from the most consequential election for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to date. To win, he will need to be seen as the only candidate fully endorsed by US President Donald Trump, and the one who can best manage the critical lifeline that the US-Israeli relationship provides.

So when one of Israel's loudest advocates - who also happened to be a personal friend and loyal ally of the US president - died suddenly earlier this month, Netanyahu seized the chance to be in Washington. "The visit would not be taking place, had Lindsey Graham not passed," Aaron David Miller, a former adviser at the US State Department on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and now senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Middle East Eye. While no foreign leader other than Netanyahu has had more facetime with the US president since he assumed power in January 2025, Tuesday's 90-minute meeting at the White House likely carried additional urgency, given it followed a series of sit-downs Trump has held with regional stakeholders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Ankara, to Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Washington.

President Donald Trump voiced frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of their White House meeting Tuesday after details of Netanyahu's planned r... '[Trump] has more leverage over this Israeli prime minister than any of his predecessors have ever had' - Aaron David Miller "It's too much facetime with the Arabs," Nizar Farzakh, a former adviser to Palestinian leadership in Ramallah and now lecturer at the George Washington University, told MEE. "Only Netanyahu wants the war [in Iran].

Everybody - literally everybody else - does not want escalation. So I guess he's coming to fix what all the others have ruined." The Netanyahu-Trump meeting was closed to reporters, suggesting there may be more disagreements to iron out between the two leaders than there are successes to boast about, Miller said. President Trump holds talks with Ukrainian and Israeli leaders on the sidelines of Senator Lindsey Graham's funeral.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump met at the White House for the first time since launching the Iran war, a meeting that was called "positive and productive."