The US midterm elections delivered a comprehensive rebuke to the Republican Party, with Democrats seizing both the House and Senate — including inroads into Texas and Kansas — while Netanyahu's coalition limped to 53 seats, eight short of a governing majority. The proximate cause in both countries was the same: the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran launched in late February, which spiked energy prices, raised the spectre of regional war, and crystallized public anger over foreign entanglements at a moment of domestic economic strain. Polling by the University of Maryland's Shibley Telhami found that a majority of Americans believed Israel had influenced Trump's decision to launch the Iran war, and that most said the war would factor in their vote. The US-Israel relationship, long treated as a political untouchable in Washington, had become an electoral liability. For the first time in decades, a sitting president's support for Israel was not an asset to be advertised but a cost to be managed. Trump's response was revealing. Mid-election, he announced a deal with Netanyahu to end the $4 billion annual US funding to Israel after 2026, widely interpreted as a desperate bid to neutralize voter anger over the relationship. Details remain vague — critically, there was no mention of continued access to US weaponry, which former Israeli ambassador Alon Pinkas identified as the real dependency. "The money, Israel could probably live without; the weaponry, it depends upon," Pinkas said. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has reacted to his own defeat with a playbook borrowed from Trump circa 2020: accusing foreign powers of boosting Arab-led parties, citing his margins among Jewish voters as legitimacy, and threatening not to recognise certified results. Opposition leader Yair Lapid declared Netanyahu politically noxious, while former adviser Daniel Levy warned that Israel was in denial about the depth of change underway in Washington. The structural dynamic is clear. Netanyahu positioned himself as the indispensable interlocutor with a Trump White House, making the bilateral relationship a personal franchise. When Trump's political capital collapsed, so did the franchise. The Iran war — which Levy described as Netanyahu dragging "a gullible president into another calamitous Middle East military adventure" — became the mechanism through which both leaders' domestic standing was destroyed simultaneously. What remains uncertain is whether this is a temporary correction or a permanent realignment. Pinkas called it "a real inflection point." The $3.8 billion annual military aid package, the UN Security Council veto shield, and access to cutting-edge US weaponry have been the pillars of Israeli strategic planning for decades. Trump's vague comments about ending funding, with no mention of a successor framework, leave all three pillars in question. There is no new strategic agreement on the table — just silence. The 20-year question is whether the Israel lobby's influence in US domestic politics has peaked. If the Iran war proved that support for Israel can cost elections, future candidates in both parties will calibrate accordingly. Netanyahu may still manoeuvre — Levy warned against dismissing his capacity to escalate with a wounded Trump — but the political physics have changed. The cost of unconditional support is now priced into American elections.
