Julian Borger writes:

Benjamin Netanyahu interrupted an uncharacteristically long silence over the Iran conflict this week with a video commentary insisting he had “full coordination” with Donald Trump, with whom he spoke “almost daily”.

The insistence that all was rosy in the US-Israeli relationship followed weeks of reports in the domestic press that Israel was no longer being consulted over the Iran conflict, and even less over Pakistani-brokered peace talks. Such is the scepticism over Netanyahu’s trustworthiness among the general public and independent press that the immediate reaction among observers to his video statement was speculation that the reality could be even worse than they had imagined.

“He is doing so much talking about how great the relationship is that it makes me rather concerned about how much tension there is,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political consultant and pollster. “I wouldn’t be surprised, as the war is clearly going very poorly from all perspectives related to the original goals.”

The US president and the Israeli prime minister have long presented mirror images of each other. They have both pioneered populist methods to dominate domestic politics, cutting away at the constitutional underpinning of the very systems that brought them to power, with little regard for past norms or constraints.

Since 28 February, when they brought the Gulf to a standstill with a devastating US-Israeli assault on Iran, they have bound their fate together so tightly that it will be very hard for either of them to unstick themselves from its legacy. [Continue reading…]