Inside Bibi’s Trump–Iran Psyop

An apparent Israeli campaign to credit Trump for the attack on Iran, and to flatter the president into joining the war, has met internal resistance and plenty of eye-rolling in the national security world. Still, there’s no question that Bibi knows how to play his counterpart—and that the American president is uniquely susceptible to ego stroking.

But in the week since the Israeli attack on Iran commenced, it’s been looking more and more like the story of that brilliant Trump–Bibi psyop was itself a psyop, with Trump as the target Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Julia Ioffe

June 19, 2025

Almost as soon as Israeli bombs started falling on Tehran last Thursday, a debate sprung up in Washington: Had Benjamin Netanyahu ignored Donald Trump’s request to hold off on striking Iran until the nuclear talks ran their course? Or was Trump, as some in the D.C. national security establishment contended, in on it the whole time? It’s a particularly fateful question now, as Trump publicly weighs whether the United States should join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure or stick it out at the negotiating table. Today, he said he would make a decision “within the next two weeks.”