Josh Dawsey

Well, it's important because, A, it's one of the United States' top allies, and B, the two men have been prosecuting this war together in Iran for the last four or five months.

That's our colleague Josh Dossey.

They went in together.

Netanyahu was critical to convincing the president that it was a good idea.

The troops have been fighting together.

And sort of how this winds down, the relationship between those two men, is integral to figuring out what happens next in the Middle East.

Obviously, in the first term, the two men were in close touch and talked a lot about military operations.

But President Trump said near the end of his first term that he was frustrated that Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden in 2020 for his win and did not.

parrot the president's false claims of election fraud.

And then the two men in the out-of-office years, I don't think talked all that regularly.

But when President Trump came back in office, Netanyahu was very careful to create strong ties with him.

He visited Washington repeatedly.

And Netanyahu calls Trump Donald.

That's correct, yes.

And a lot of the other world leaders don't do that.

That's a different thing.

It certainly speaks of the familiarity of their relationship.

He brought him a gold pager that was supposed to be like the pagers that the Israelis used to blow up Hamas operatives.

It was sort of viewed as an intelligence coup by the Mossad.

A lot of folks were sort of wowed by it.