TEHRAN - In a commentary on Sunday, the Al Jazeera staff analyzed the history of Trump’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in his first term as American president (Jan. 1997 to Jan. 2021) up to the current days that the two have joined hands against Iran.

The following is an excerpt of the article:

President Trump announced his military has attacked three Iranian nuclear sites in the early hours on Sunday.

Trump also said Netanyahu and he had worked like “perhaps no team has ever worked before”. Those laudatory comments represent a stark contrast from the far more crude language that Trump used for the Israeli leader just four years ago, and their public tension over Iran less than a month ago.

In his televised address on Sunday, during the early morning hours in the Middle East, Trump thanked and congratulated Netanyahu. “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu,” he said, referring to a name the Israeli PM is widely known by.

“We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel,” Trump claimed, referring to Iran’s nuclear facilities.

However, Israel remains the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear arsenal, though it has never officially acknowledged it.

The U.S. strikes follow ten days of Israeli missile attacks against Iran, including on its nuclear facilities. Israel did not have the bombs needed to damage or destroy Iran’s most fortified nuclear site in Fordow, buried deep inside a mountain.  The U.S., using its bunker-buster bombs, hit Fordow as well as the facilities in Natanz and Isfahan on Sunday.

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Trump’s decision to align himself with Netanyahu in bringing the U.S. into the war with Iran has split his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) support base.

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has publicly said it does not believe that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, an assessment shared by U.S. intelligence agencies, which also drew the same conclusion earlier this year.

However, Trump has in recent days said his hand-picked spy chief, Tulsi Gabbard, and the intelligence community’s assessment were “wrong”.

Trump did best service to Netanyahu in first term

Trump recognised Jerusalem (al-Quds) as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv, a long-sought symbolic victory for Netanyahu. Trump appointed an ambassador who was ideologically aligned with Israel’s settler movement, David Friedman, in May 2017.

In March 2019, the U.S. president also recognised Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, becoming the only world leader to back Israel’s annexation of the region that is recognised internationally as a part of Syria.

In September 2020, Trump hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords, which led to normalisation of relations between Israel and four Arab states – Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan.

Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal — in May 2018, through a presidential proclamation that reinstated U.S. sanctions against Iran.

This marked a major shift from the previous U.S. policy of implementing the JCPOA in January 2016 to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump declared the deal “defective at its core”.

However, in a December 2021 Axios interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump revealed that his relationship with Netanyahu deteriorated after the Israeli PM publicly congratulated incoming President Joe Biden on his 2020 election victory — a loss that Trump has refused to accept.

“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,” Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”

“F*** him,” Trump said, expressing his anger.

Trump rallies behind Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians

While the incoming Trump administration initially claimed to broker a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, with some observers noting that he may rein in the Israeli military campaign, it soon rallied behind Netanyahu’s continuing genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

In a joint news conference in February this year, Trump wildly proposed that the U.S. should “take over” the Gaza Strip, redevelop it, and relocate Palestinians? — a plan that Netanyahu publicly endorsed as “nothing wrong”.

Netanyahu also said he was “committed to U.S. President Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza”. Later that month, the U.S. approved $2.5bn worth of arms sales to Israel, including bombs and drones.

In March, Israel resumed major air attacks in Gaza after negotiations over the release of captives collapsed. The White House confirmed that Israel had consulted Trump before the attacks.

On Iran, meanwhile, Trump’s position has seesawed from alignment with Netanyahu to his own distinct positions.

April 12-June 13, 2025: The U.S. led back-channel nuclear negotiations with Iran, mediated by Oman.

May: Trump stated during his Persian Gulf tour that the U.S. was in “very serious negotiations” with Iran and “getting very close” to a nuclear deal, signaling openness to diplomacy. On May 28, Trump said he told Netanyahu to hold off on any strike against Iran to give his administration more time to push for a new nuclear deal. He told reporters at the White House that he relayed to Netanyahu a strike “would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution”.

June 11-12: The IAEA claimed Iran had not been transparent enough in its nuclear program, and that elements of its approach were in violation of the country’s safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.S. began evacuating its regional embassies. Tensions surged as Trump stated that diplomacy was stalling and hinted at serious consequences?if no deal was reached.

June 13: Israel launched massive air strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, killing nuclear scientists, scholars, and top military commanders.

In the initial U.S. reaction to Israeli attacks on Iran, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, called the strikes “unilateral” and claimed Washington was “not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region”.

The U.S.-Iran talks over a nuclear deal were suspended. Trump admitted that he was aware of Israel’s plans to attack Iran.

June 19: Trump, after nearly a week of Israel’s war against Iran, signaled support for Israel’s military campaign.

June 21: Trump ordered U.S. air strikes on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities, coordinating with Israel.