US President Donald Trump has formally endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nine days before a parliamentary election that could end the longest premiership in Israel’s history.
In a message addressed to the Israeli public on October 18, Trump described Netanyahu as a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” and credited him with confronting Iran. He said the Israeli leader had grown stronger under pressure at home rather than buckling.
Trump also tied the outcome of the vote to future American military action against Tehran. He said Washington would finish the job against Iran unless it changed course rapidly, and suggested the United States would have to act alone if Israel ended up with what he called the wrong leader.
Israel and the United States struck Iranian nuclear sites in February, in a war whose outcome remains contested inside Israel.
Netanyahu welcomed the endorsement within hours and thanked Trump on X, writing: “Together we will complete the mission!” He told voters that removing the Iranian threat was the central issue of the campaign and that it could be done only alongside Washington.
His main challenger, former armed forces chief Gadi Eisenkot, replied that he valued the US president but that Israeli citizens alone decide who leads them. Speaking at Tel Aviv University, he said he had asked for no outside involvement in the vote.
Polls have pointed to deadlock for months. Eisenkot’s Yashar party, founded in 2025, has led most surveys on between 20 and 26 seats against 18 to 23 for Netanyahu’s Likud, though neither bloc is close to the 61 seats needed to control the 120-member Knesset.
As Brussels Signal reported when the date was confirmed in July, the ballot on October 27 amounts to a referendum on Netanyahu’s tenure. It is the first national vote since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the first since 1988 to be held on schedule.
The intervention follows a pattern that has unsettled European governments. Trump has backed candidates in Hungary, Poland, Argentina, Japan, Honduras, Chile and Colombia during his second term, and Viktor Orbán’s defeat by Péter Magyar in April was his only clear setback.
The endorsement had been in doubt until the final days of the campaign. Earlier in October Trump declined repeatedly to say whether he backed Netanyahu, telling Time he was no longer involved in politics.
