Middle East Insider · Issue 064 · Monday, October 19, 2026

The Endorsement

Good afternoon. President Trump endorsed Netanyahu on Sunday in a letter posted to Truth Social and wrote that unless Iran changes course “we will soon finish the job”; Netanyahu asked Israelis to “listen to him”; Abbas Araghchi answered “Be our guest”; and Benny Gantz left the race today, eight days before the vote. Also today: Houthi missiles killed 53 recruits at a camp in Shabwa, Israeli police arrested ten over the weekend’s settler attacks, and Germany summoned Iran’s ambassador.

President Trump gives Netanyahu his “Complete and Total Endorsement” and says the United States will “soon finish the job” in Iran; Netanyahu says “listen to him,” Eisenkot says Israelis “are the only ones who will decide,” Araghchi says “Be our guest,” and Gantz leaves the race.

At 10:45 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, President Trump posted a letter to “the Great People of Israel” on Truth Social: Netanyahu is “a Great Warrior Prime Minister”; Iran has “been systematically destroyed, both Militarily and Financially, and unless they change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job”; and “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so” (Truth Social). Axios calls it the first public endorsement of a candidate in an Israeli election by an American president, and reports that the two men discussed a new operation against Iran two weeks ago and that the President decided to wait until after the Israeli and American elections (Axios).

American involvement in Israel’s elections is not new, and both parties have practiced it. George H.W. Bush withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees from Yitzhak Shamir’s government over settlements before the June 1992 election, which Yitzhak Rabin won (Christian Science Monitor). Bill Clinton hosted Shimon Peres at the White House weeks before the 1996 vote and said in 2018 of his effort for Peres, “I tried to do it in a way that didn’t overtly involve me” (Times of Israel); in 1999 his pollster Stanley Greenberg and James Carville worked for Ehud Barak while the Republican consultant Arthur Finkelstein worked for Netanyahu (JTA). A bipartisan Senate subcommittee found in 2016 that OneVoice, a State Department grantee, had “used campaign infrastructure built in part with grant funds to support V15, a campaign to defeat the incumbent Israeli government” in 2015 (Senate). President Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights with Netanyahu beside him fifteen days before the April 2019 vote (AP).

Netanyahu answered on X within minutes and in a video on Sunday evening: “President Trump says he will do it, and that he will do it only if the two of us do it together. Therefore, I am asking you, listen to him, Weigh his words, and vote for me” (Times of Israel). Tonight he posted a video of a call in which the President told him, “You’re the man I want by my side, Bibi” (Times of Israel). Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of staff of the Israeli army, who leads the Yashar party, said Israel’s citizens “are the only ones who will decide who the prime minister will be” (Times of Israel). Today Benny Gantz, the former defense minister, whose party was below the threshold in every poll, left the race: “I will not run in the upcoming elections, but I will continue fighting for unity” (Israel National News, Jerusalem Post).

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X on Sunday: “Last time you wanted to ‘finish the job’, Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too” (Iran International).

President Trump’s letter makes two statements: that the United States will “soon finish the job” in Iran unless Tehran changes course, and that it would rather do so with Netanyahu. I take no side in Israel’s vote. On the war my judgment is this. Tehran spent the weekend threatening, and the case for striking the Houthi launchers and the underground site at Pickaxe Mountain, near the Natanz enrichment site, stands on its own, whoever forms Israel’s next government. The blockade should hold until Tehran commits, in a form that can be verified, not to rebuild its nuclear program, and the timing is the President’s to choose.

MEF Reports, Shattering the Palestinians’ Hope of Defeating Israel (Oct 19): Meir Ben-Shabbat, Israel’s national security adviser from 2017 to 2021 after thirty years in the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service: the conflict ends only when “the Palestinians lose the hope of subduing Israel,” with eight policy lines, among them “No PA elections now.”

MEF Online, Syria’s Kurdish Autonomy Is Fading as Arab Unrest Challenges Damascus’s Control (Oct 18): Jonathan Spyer, from the Jerusalem Post, on the protests in Hasakah, in northeast Syria, and the “further steps by the authorities in Damascus to terminate the remnants of Kurdish autonomy” they may bring.

MEF Online, This Is How Tehran Works to Divide Democracies and Fuel Anti-Semitism (Oct 18): Giulio Meotti, from the Italian daily Il Foglio, on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s report on Iran’s thirty-year “soft war”: 340 influencers, outlets and organizations in one network.

MEF Observer, U.S. Must Crack Down on Countries Allowing Iranians Visa-Free Travel (Oct 18): Michael Rubin: Haiti and Suriname admit Iranian passport holders for 90 days without a visa, and Congress should make American aid depend on visa applications in advance.

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Houthi missiles kill 53 recruits in Shabwa, a Saudi helicopter goes down in Najran, and the Royal Navy’s shipping advisory raises the Gulf’s threat level.

Shabwa. Three Houthi ballistic missiles hit the al-Alam training camp in Shabwa province this morning, killing 53 and wounding more than 200 by the local authorities’ figures; the dead were new recruits of the internal security forces (Reuters, AFP).

The kingdom. The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen said on Sunday that a National Guard AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter crashed in Najran “due to a technical malfunction,” killing its two officers; the Houthis said they shot it down, and the coalition’s spokesman, Turki al-Malki, answered on X: “You claim to have shot it down, but it will enter the battlefield soon” (AFP, Al Arabiya). The Israeli news site Walla reports that the IDF is helping Saudi Arabia against the Houthis with warning, targets and a situational picture (Jerusalem Post).

The strait. The joint advisory of October 18 from UK Maritime Trade Operations, the Royal Navy’s shipping-advisory office, raised the threat level in the Arabian Gulf to “substantial” after two tankers were attacked off Al Jubayl on Friday; the strait stays “severe”; the Revolutionary Guards’ claim that two supertankers struck mines has “no substantiation”; and transits in the week to October 14 were 254, “approximately 70% below pre-conflict levels” (UKMTO). Brent settled at $109.86 on Friday, the highest since May, and traded at $108.14 at 10:27 a.m. Eastern today (Reuters); regular gasoline averages $4.30 a gallon and diesel $6.32 (AAA).

Kan puts Yashar ahead and i24NEWS puts Likud ahead with neither bloc at 61, police arrest ten over the settler attacks, Macron refuses his interior minister’s resignation, and Germany summons Iran’s ambassador.

The polls. Kan, the public broadcaster, published a poll on Sunday (Kantar, 554 respondents) giving Eisenkot’s Yashar 23 seats and Likud 21, the Netanyahu bloc 51, the Eisenkot bloc 52 and the Arab parties 13 (Haaretz); i24NEWS’s poll the same evening (Direct Polls, 525) gives Likud 25, Yashar 21 and the coalition 57 (i24NEWS). The Forum’s poll of polls stands at 54 for the Netanyahu bloc, 52 for the opposition and 14 for the Arab parties.

The West Bank. Police arrested ten Israelis at dawn today “on suspicion of involvement in the violent incidents” of the weekend: Friday’s beating of Heidi Levine, the Washington Post photographer, and Saturday’s attack at Taybeh on European diplomats and a French mayor (Times of Israel). Rubio, on Saturday: “We’ve asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff” (Times of Israel).

Lebanon and Gaza. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam asked the justice minister and the Court of Cassation’s prosecutor to widen the investigation of the C-4 and TNT seized at Dahr al-Baidar on October 5 and wrote that “decisions of war and peace must remain exclusively in the hands of the state” (L’Orient Today). An official of the Board of Peace, the body set up under President Trump’s Gaza plan, said its proposed base for the International Stabilization Force awaits Israeli approval: “after the election, we’d hope to accelerate that at a much faster speed” (Times of Israel).

France and Germany. The Interior Ministry’s figures for Saturday: 2,397 arrests and 997 police and gendarmes injured (BFMTV). The Élysée said on Monday that Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had offered his resignation and that Macron refused it (Le Parisien); a curfew takes effect in central Paris at 11 p.m. tonight (franceinfo). Germany summoned Iran’s ambassador today, four days after a Hamburg court sentenced a Danish national of Afghan origin to eight and a half years for spying on Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews, and Volker Beck of the German-Israeli Society; the Foreign Office wrote: “We will not allow Iran to threaten our free society” (Der Spiegel, FAZ).

Israel’s soldiers begin voting tomorrow at the army’s polling stations; everyone else votes on Tuesday, October 27. Israel Insider with Ashley Perry airs online on Wednesday, October 21, at 3 p.m. Eastern.

I will give private lunch briefings on American policy after the Iran war in San Francisco on November 10, Los Angeles on November 13 and San Diego on November 16, and will also be in Texas. If you would like to meet, or to host an evening for the Forum, reply to this email.

Corrections Desk. Clear this afternoon. When this brief gets something wrong, write [email protected]; corrections run in print.

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