Prime minister of Israel and leader of the Likud party, the largest in the Knesset. He is Israel's longest-serving prime minister, with over 18 years in office. In the 1980s he served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, where he met Donald Trump, then a thrusting New York entrepreneur. He has known the president longer than any other world leader has. He built his political career on swashbuckling speeches and media appearances.
In 2002 Netanyahu testified to Congress advocating the toppling of Saddam Hussein, telling lawmakers: "If you take out Saddam—Saddam's regime—I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." After the Iraq war curdled from military triumph to strategic disaster, his advocacy helped darken suspicions that Israel had nefarious influence over American foreign policy. But Netanyahu was not in power at the time, having been outmanoeuvred by Ariel Sharon, who privately cautioned President George W. Bush about the invasion.
In 2015, while the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran to curb its nuclear-weapons programme, Netanyahu accepted a Republican invitation to address Congress about the dangers of such talks. Democrats felt he was taking sides in American politics; since then he has cosied up to Donald Trump and made his partisan allegiances even clearer, including nominating the president for a Nobel peace prize.
He faces corruption charges for bribery and fraud (which he denies). His ruling coalition includes far-right allies, including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there. He has talked publicly about tapering American military aid to zero over ten years and predicts an expansion of the Abraham accords. He has yet to set up an inquiry into the October 7th 2023 Hamas attack.
On June 13th 2025 Netanyahu dispatched wave after wave of Israeli aircraft to strike Iran's nuclear installations at Natanz, in an operation he codenamed "Rising Lion" and described as a two-week campaign. The strikes killed the top echelons of the Iranian armed forces, including Mohamad Bagheri, the chief of staff, and at least 14 nuclear scientists. For three decades he had warned that Iran's nuclear programme was Israel's gravest external threat. Netanyahu claimed to have evidence that Iran was weaponising its technology and that it had enough enriched uranium for 15 bombs. He argued Iran's talks with America had been a smokescreen behind which scientists were pressing rapidly ahead. He called on the Iranian people to "unite around its flag", evoking the pre-revolutionary flag of the Shah. Donald Trump endorsed that view but continued to call for a return to the negotiating table.
Netanyahu followed the template used to cripple Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2024: eliminating the military command, then turning to the political leadership. But critics noted he lacked a diplomatic exit strategy.
A majority of members of the European Union want the chance to re-examine Israel's free-trade agreement with Europe, its main trading partner. Britain has suspended talks on a new trade deal. J.D. Vance cancelled a planned visit to Israel in May 2025, apparently because he did not want to appear to endorse Israel's latest military expansion.
In 2020 Netanyahu enraged Trump by congratulating Joe Biden on his election victory. Before Trump's inauguration, Steve Witkoff, the president's Middle East envoy, forced Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza. After the inauguration ties seemed mended—Netanyahu was the first foreign leader invited to the White House. But Israel then broke the ceasefire, cut off aid and restarted its war.
By mid-2025 co-ordination between Israel and America appeared to have broken down. Trump ended America's bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen without mentioning their missile attacks on Israel, and without notifying Israel in advance. While sitting in the White House, Netanyahu was blindsided by Trump's announcement of talks with Iran about its nuclear programme. Trump's personal representatives negotiated with Hamas for the release of Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli soldier held in Gaza for 19 months, against Israel's express wishes and without keeping Netanyahu in the loop. Witkoff reportedly told hostages' families: "Israel is prolonging the war, even though we do not see where further progress can be made."
Trump's four-day tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates pointedly did not include a stop in Israel.
Netanyahu tried to blame the Shin Bet, the domestic-security service, and the IDF for being caught unawares by Hamas on October 7th 2023. Ronen Bar, the outgoing Shin Bet boss, accused Netanyahu of dodging responsibility and of ordering the service to monitor anti-government protesters. After a supreme-court battle, Bar agreed to step down in June 2025.
Netanyahu's chosen replacement was Major General David Zini, an infantry commander with no intelligence background. A scion of a nationalist-rabbinical family, Zini publicly opposed any prisoner exchange with Hamas, calling it "an eternal war". The attorney-general told Netanyahu he must wait for legal guidelines before making the appointment, but he ploughed ahead without informing the IDF chief of staff.
After Israel's strikes on Qatar in September 2025, Trump lost patience with Netanyahu. On September 29th 2025 the two men presented a 20-point plan for "eternal peace" in Gaza. Under its terms: hostages would be released; Hamas leaders and fighters would disarm and be granted amnesty or exile; a technocratic administration excluding Hamas would take over, supervised by an international board under Trump; the Israeli army would withdraw in stages, handing security to an international force and newly vetted Palestinian police. In the long run, rehabilitation of Gaza and reforms to the Palestinian Authority could lead to statehood. Eight Muslim countries, including the main Arab powers and Turkey, backed the deal. Trump signalled that "Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza", keeping the prospect of a two-state solution open.
By supporting the plan Netanyahu pivoted from his commitment to a forever war. Almost three-quarters of Israelis backed the proposal. On October 8th 2025 negotiators in Egypt signed the first phase. Netanyahu said Israel would remain "deep inside the Strip" for the foreseeable future—language at odds with the plan's provision for further withdrawals—and pointedly ignored Trump's request to stop bombing Gaza while talks were under way.
In June 2025 Britain and other Western allies announced personal sanctions on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, far-right ministers in his coalition.
Since October 2023 Netanyahu has been trying to shift the blame for the failure to anticipate Hamas's attacks onto the security chiefs, nearly all of whom have since resigned. In November 2025 the arrest of Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the military advocate-general, for leaking a video of IDF soldiers sexually assaulting a Hamas detainee at Sde Teiman detention centre, gave these efforts new life. Netanyahu called the leak "the most serious reputational attack Israel has experienced since its foundation" and his allies called for charges against soldiers accused of crimes in Gaza to be dropped. Accusations that the general had allies in the judiciary and media fuelled a co-ordinated far-right assault on the "deep state" of Israel's old elites. Netanyahu is also hoping to divert attention from an investigation into three of his media advisers accused of leaking secret intelligence documents. He intends to campaign for re-election at least in part by appealing to the animosity his supporters feel towards Israel's legal establishment.
On November 30th 2025 Netanyahu's lawyers presented a request for a presidential pardon to Isaac Herzog, Israel's president. Netanyahu remains adamant he has done nothing wrong and insists the case would lead to his exoneration. In effect he is demanding an end to his trial and the dropping of all charges. Donald Trump had publicly suggested to Herzog in an October speech to the Knesset that he pardon the prime minister, and repeated the request in a letter on November 12th. In 2008 Netanyahu himself said of his predecessor Ehud Olmert: "A prime minister up to his neck in investigations has no moral or public mandate to make fateful decisions for the state of Israel." Olmert, unlike Netanyahu, resigned when it became clear he was about to be indicted for taking bribes, and later spent time in prison.
On March 30th 2026 the Knesset passed the annual state budget, a rare feat for an Israeli government before an election. Netanyahu secured the vote by stuffing the package with handouts for religious communities and West Bank settlers. Passing the budget means his coalition will probably serve its full four-year term, another rarity. The coalition also passed a law imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis.
Most polls give the ruling coalition 52 or 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats. Ultra-Orthodox parties, key coalition partners, are deeply unpopular owing to their insistence that young religious men be exempt from military service. Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party is predicted to fall below the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the vote. The opposition remains fragmented: Yair Lapid's centrist party has slumped; Naftali Bennett has risen but lost ground to Gadi Eisenkot, a former general who set up his own party. The opposition ranges from nationalists to conservative Islamists and Arab communists, unlikely to govern together.
Netanyahu will be leading Likud in a general election for the 12th time. If he wins he could become the longest-serving leader of any democracy since the second world war. His main challenger is Naftali Bennett. On May 20th 2026 the Knesset voted preliminarily to dissolve itself after two ultra-Orthodox parties demanded a law exempting religious seminary students from compulsory military service that Netanyahu was willing to pass but could not muster the votes for; parliamentary elections must now be held by October 27th 2026. At 76 he has been dealing with heart problems and prostate cancer. Mr Bennett has joined forces with Yair Lapid, and has promised that the first cabinet meeting of any new government would appoint a commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the October 7th 2023 massacre.
Netanyahu is the big winner from the American-Israeli war on Iran that began on February 28th 2026. He has spent much of his career lecturing American presidents on the need to confront Iran. His hard-right coalition firmly supports the war, as do nearly all opposition leaders. An overwhelming 81% of Israelis support the strikes, though only 38% express high trust in Netanyahu, according to a survey from the Institute for National Security Studies. He hopes a successful outcome will convince voters he has "changed the map of the Middle East", securing his re-election. The vote must be held by October 2026; once the war is over, sources in his Likud party believe he will bring it forward. To avoid a row with Donald Trump, Western allies have endorsed Israeli theories of war: attack without warning, use overwhelming force and do not scruple to kill an enemy's leaders.
Netanyahu is blunt about wishing for regime change in Iran, claiming Israel wants to "create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands". Trump, by contrast, seems less eager for full regime change and more focused on controlling the flow of Iranian oil. Israeli officials detected discord after American officials expressed anger over the scale of a massive Israeli strike on fuel tanks in Tehran on March 7th—the first sign of a rift. On June 24th 2025, at the end of Israel's previous war with Iran, Netanyahu claimed to have "removed two existential threats"—Iran's nuclear and missile programmes. Eight months later, Iranian missiles are falling on Israel again. Israeli air-force commander Major-General Tomer Bar flew an F-15 fighter jet on a strike mission in Iran on March 6th. Stopping the fighting would be a liability for Netanyahu, who is loth to end the war on an inconclusive note before a difficult re-election fight later in the year.
In January 2026, as Iran massacred protesters, Netanyahu was surprisingly reticent about American military action, telling The Economist: "Revolutions are best done from within." A month later Israel shifted to urging America to attack. Israeli generals flew to Washington to discuss strike plans. Netanyahu met Steve Witkoff on February 3rd and tried to convince him that a deal with Iran was pointless. Netanyahu believes Israel's attacks on Hizbullah precipitated the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—a claim he finds gallingly overshadowed by Donald Trump's crediting Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". He cannot visit countries that are members of the court, though these do not include America. Donald Trump's administration has sanctioned the court's chief prosecutor and four of its judges.
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.