Trump endorses Netanyahu nine days before Israel's election

President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nine days before Israel's parliamentary election. In a letter "To the Great People of Israel" posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump asked readers to let it "serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu," calling him "a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace."

Trump tied the endorsement to the conflict with Iran, saying Tehran had threatened Israel and the United States for decades and had now been "systematically destroyed, both Militarily and Financially." "If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi," he wrote, "America will have to do this work ourselves." Netanyahu thanked Trump on X for "the tremendous support and the collaboration," adding: "Together we will complete the mission!"

Israelis vote for a new Knesset on Oct. 27. Such an explicit intervention by a sitting U.S. president in an Israeli campaign is unusual. The Times of Israel describes former military chief Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party as the opposition frontrunner.