Lindsey Graham Told Netanyahu This Would Happen

He flew to Washington knowing everything waiting for him, and went anyway.

Netanyahu and Trump in the Oval Office, July 28, 2026. The meeting was closed to the press; the photograph was released by the Prime Minister's Office. (GPO)

Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Washington on Monday night knowing exactly what was waiting for him: a meeting, a funeral, and uncharted political terrain.

Netanyahu knew Israel had already been excluded from negotiations on Iran, the issue that mattered most to him. Mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Qatar spent the previous days working on a proposal to resolve disagreements over the Strait of Hormuz and revive the memorandum of understanding the United States signed with Tehran last month. Iran and Oman approved it. The only outstanding item is Trump’s signature, and the White House was holding off on that decision until the president had seen Netanyahu. Despite starting the war on the side of the US, Israel will not be a signatory. It was not at the table, and it cannot amend the 60-day deadline for resolving issues related to Iran’s nuclear problem that expires next month. Here, Israel is totally dependent upon the United States.

Netanyahu knew before he arrived in Washington about the civilian nuclear agreement that the US had signed with Saudi Arabia the week before. He knew that this agreement contained no clause on a coveted normalization of ties with Israel. He knew about Trump’s Truth Social post saying that the agreement hinges on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords. And the prime minister knew that the Saudis had immediately clapped back, saying that social media posts do not alter signed agreements. Asked later about the normalization condition he had attached to the Saudi nuclear agreement, the president said he had not spoken to Saudi Arabia about the Abraham Accords.

Here too, Israel is left dependent on America.

Netanyahu had also heard what the president was saying about him. On Monday, Trump was asked about Israel’s objection to selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to Turkey. This has long been Israel’s policy, and earlier this month, Netanyahu pushed that position personally with an appearance on Fox & Friends. Trump doesn’t like being told what to do (Bibi should know this by now), and said as much to the reporter who asked him about the F-35s. Turkey is no fan of Israel or of Netanyahu, Trump acknowledged, but “they’ve been great for me.” Then on Tuesday morning, hours before the meeting, Trump went on the Fox show, where he was asked about the intelligence Netanyahu was bringing him on Pickaxe Mountain, the underground site near Natanz where Israeli intelligence believes Iran has moved centrifuges. Trump said the US Space Force had the best cameras in the world trained on it and he knew exactly what was happening there. It was not a big problem. He was irritated that Netanyahu had announced it publicly rather than raising it with him privately. “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi’s telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.”

Amid all of this, Netanyahu knew too that American sympathies had crossed over: for the first time since Gallup began asking in 2001, more Americans side with the Palestinians than with Israel, 41 percent to 36, with independents flipping for the first time and Republican sympathy at its lowest point since 2004. Here, Israel is truly at the mercy of America—not just the government, but the overwhelming tide of popular opinion.

Benjamin Netanyahu boarded the plane to DC anyway, because a meeting with Trump was the only thing left available to him. Israeli surveys this week show that the government’s handling of October 7 is the top issue for undecided voters. The achievements in Iran that Netanyahu expected to run on have not materialized. Jewish Israelis backed the Iran campaign at 93% in early March, a level of support no government has seen in decades. Likud now polls at its lowest since August 2025 and trails General Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party in Channel 12’s latest poll.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham died on July 11, and the memorial service was what finally got Netanyahu into the Oval Office. He had spent weeks trying to secure the invitation, and American officials told CNN they were frustrated by what they saw as Israeli attempts to force the meeting onto the president’s schedule through leaks to the press.

The funny thing is, Lindsey Graham of all people had told Netanyahu that this would happen.

Last November, at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Las Vegas, Graham told the Jerusalem Post that annexing the West Bank would isolate Israel and cost it American support, doing more damage to the country’s future than any Iranian bomb. A single state would either end Israel as a Jewish state or leave millions without rights. The only way to keep Israel both Jewish and democratic, once security conditions allow, is two states.

Graham also spoke about Saudi-Israel normalization. It would require a political solution with the Palestinians. Graham was not channeling any special wisdom here; he was only repeating what Saudi officials have been saying very clearly since the 1980s, a message that Israeli leaders have consistently opted to ignore.

“Being pro-Israel means telling hard truths,” the late senator said.

Nobody could question Lindsey Graham’s commitment to Israel’s security. Unreleased documentary footage obtained by the Wall Street Journal and reported on Sunday, shows Graham in his Senate office on March 4 preparing to fly to Florida and persuade the president to bring the United States to support Israel with a bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, on top of the Iran war already underway. Elsewhere in the footage, Senator Graham celebrates the war in Iran that he helped bring about and compares Trump and Netanyahu to Roosevelt and Churchill.

There is always an excuse to dismiss warnings from outsiders. They don’t understand Israel’s reality. They don’t have our best interests at heart. Could Israeli leaders make this argument in good faith about Lindsey Graham? No chance.

Good faith or not, Netanyahu chose to ignore him. The consequences came home today, on precisely the thing he had flown to Washington to get.

Graham was deeply invested in Saudi-Israel normalization, and he understood what it would mean for the Jewish state. He had met the crown prince himself and spent the Biden years assembling the Republican votes any Senate-ratified Saudi security guarantee would need, since 67 senators is not a number a Democratic administration reaches on its own. That work does not transfer. Two days after he died, the governor of South Carolina appointed his sister Darline to serve out the term; she inherits the seat but nothing else.

The Netanyahu-Trump meeting ran ninety minutes and was closed to the press throughout. Netanyahu entered through the West Executive Avenue door, only partly visible to reporters, rather than the West Wing entrance, where Trump has previously come out to greet him. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met Trump earlier that morning, used the same door.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt covered both meetings in one sentence, calling them positive and productive. Zelenskyy went on Telegram afterward and described what he and the president had discussed: licensing to produce Patriot interceptors, and how to restart talks with Moscow. Netanyahu’s office released a photo of the president and prime minister sitting beside a model of Air Force One.

In the end, Netanyahu came to Washington as a sideshow to a funeral. The prime minister of Israel was reduced to asking America for a prize that the man being buried had already told him how to win, and had warned him he would lose. He got a photograph with a toy airplane.

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