Saying “no” to Trump isn’t an option. When Trump speaks, it’s not a recommendation, it’s an order

Photo:  AP Images

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For the Israeli political class, this year’s Pesach was marked by  a flood of leaks at home and abroad. The latest was laundered through the New York Times. The time-honored practice of leaking sensitive material to the foreign press is a way of bypassing the Israeli censor — once a story breaks abroad, the Israeli media is free to cover it, too.

This leak — a detailed exposé of Israel’s plans for an attack on Iranian nuclear sites, shining a spotlight on the disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem — didn’t trigger an instant investigation, despite it being perpetrated by an Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman.

The leak shed light on the reasons for Trump’s White House invitation to Netanyahu the week before Pesach, a surprise visit in the middle of the prime minister’s trip to Hungary. In effect, Trump said “don’t,” imposing a veto on Bibi’s plan for a massive May attack on Iranian nuclear sites, which would have set Iran’s nuclear capabilities back by a year.

Netanyahu, who’s as deferential to Trump as a chassid toward his rebbe, reacted circumspectly, but didn’t deny the report.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has been leading the global effort against the Iranian nuclear program for over a decade, even when others downplayed the threat and called it a ‘political spin’ or the prime minister ‘paranoid,’ ” said the Prime Minister’s Office in an official statement.

“The prime minister has led countless overt and covert actions in the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, thanks to which Iran does not possess a nuclear arsenal today. These actions have delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a decade, thanks to the prime minister’s determined resistance to the opposition to his tough policy at home and abroad. As the prime minister has said before: Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.”

The cautious statement only hinted at Israel’s deep concern — not only about the leak of its most sensitive plans, but about the disagreement with Trump, whom Bibi can’t ignore or defy as he did with Obama and Biden.

Israel attributes the disagreement with Trump to a Western version of the “big Satan, little Satan” dichotomy.

“Trump sees China as the key threat — but for us, it’s Iran,” one official told me, reflecting the sense of an am levadad (a people alone).

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“The trick is knowing how to navigate — saying yes whenever possible, and no, when you don’t have a choice,” Netanyahu told me on the return flight from a previous visit to Washington.

Saying “no” to Trump isn’t an option. When Trump speaks, it’s not a recommendation, it’s an order.

On the operational level, it’s hard to see a large-scale Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities without American support, as an attack would have limited effect without America’s unique capabilities.

The main difference between Israeli and American capabilities can be summed up in terms of operational breathing space. Significantly setting back Iran’s nuclear capabilities from the air would require unique bunker-busting munitions, heavy bombers, coordinated operations across a vast area, effective attacks on dispersed nuclear sites, and the ability to strike again if Iran resumes uranium enrichment with foreign assistance.

These operational limitations are real, even before getting into the political infeasibility of openly defying Trump by launching independent strikes on Iran. All this makes it likely that Netanyahu will avoid taking action without a green light from Trump at the very least, let alone without American military support.

The public attacks on the Obama administration’s policy have given way to a careful strategy of attempting to pull strings within the administration to influence the struggle between the hawks and the isolationists in Trump’s cabinet.

Israel has identified Michael Kurilla, Michael Waltz, and Marco Rubio as supporting the Israeli position, while Tulsi Gabbard, Susie Wiles, Pete Hegseth, and J.D. Vance pushed to exhaust the option of negotiations with Iran and nip Israel’s attack plans in the bud.

The worst-case scenario from Netanyahu’s point of view is the signing of a “bad deal” that would freeze Iran’s nuclear capabilities without destroying them. When Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff announced during the holiday that Washington would agree to a reduction of Iran’s capabilities without their destruction, Israel launched a behind-the-scenes onslaught in Washington that led to Witkoff issuing a clarification on social media.

All this back-and-forth didn’t improve the master dealmaker’s negotiating position in the face of the hardened Iranian negotiators.

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“The Netanyahu doctrine is to bluster, bluster, bluster, and then leak to the press that he was going to [attack], but they didn’t let him. We won’t get another opportunity like this.” Such was the reaction of former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who’s emerged as Netanyahu’s strongest challenger in public opinion polls.

The question of who leaked the information to the New York Times comes at a particularly toxic moment in Israeli politics. Bennett is accusing Netanyahu of leaking the information to try to dodge blame for failing to attack Iran. But it seems hard to believe that Netanyahu, whose relationship with Trump is one of his strongest cards, would have an interest in leaking information that shows him at his weakest.

Former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot of the Blue and White Party, whose name has come up as a potential figure in a new anti-Bibi political alliance, was more circumspect.

“The question is who had an interest in leaking the attack plans,” he said. He explained that Israel would find it very difficult to carry out the strike on its own: “An attack on Iran is not an attack in Gaza or Lebanon, it’s a huge operation that would require tremendous effort, and we’ll need the United States on our side.”

That said, the flow of American military supplies to Israel continues as before. Only time will tell whether this is just another negotiating tactic by Trump to put pressure on the Iranians, or whether it’s part of the preparations for the attack, starting from the point of view that the negotiations will reach a dead end.

On Motzaei Pesach, the White House conveyed a message to Jerusalem in the spirit of “patience will pay off.” But patience has never been part of the Israeli national character.  And in the Trump White House, patience is seen as a weakness.

We’ll soon find out whether Trump, of all people, is the one who will abandon Israel for good — and this time, a Netanyahu congressional address against a deal won’t be an option.

The political official I spoke to summed it up concisely: “A bad deal under Trump will be worse than Obama’s deal, because this time we’ll truly be on our own.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1058)