The giant Likud party billboards featuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiling at US President Donald Trump under the caption, “Netanyahu, a Different League,” still tower over major Israeli intersections. Who knows, the Likud may need them again soon, judging by the state of the negotiations on forming a new coalition government. Another election round may soon be on the agenda. However, with every passing day, Netanyahu’s investment in the US president is going sour. The question marks surrounding Trump’s foreign policy, and mostly (the absence of) his Middle East policy, are morphing into warning signs. His abandonment of the Kurds in northern Syria is the latest in a series of US measures indicating that Netanyahu’s stalwart US pillar increasingly resembles a weather vane buffeted by a hurricane.

“This isn’t spin, it’s not a whim,” Netanyahu promised in his Oct. 3 speech at the swearing-in ceremony of the 22nd Knesset, embarking on a terrifying description of the “Iranian threat." Iran, he warned, was attacking international shipping lanes and the Arabian Peninsula. “It is also directly attacking US aircraft and now the Saudi oil fields, and in the clearest words possible, this is what their generals said, as recently as two days ago: 'Israel will disappear.'”

Still, the spin lies, intentionally, in what Netanyahu did not say. He did not refer to his colossal failure in handling the crisis vis-a-vis Iran.

Netanyahu dislikes admitting failure, especially an egregious strategic one. Far easier to talk about Iran’s “gall” and to frighten of “a second Holocaust.” Netanyahu’s flagship — the struggle against Iran — is slowly sinking. Trump, the captain whom the prime minister placed at the helm, no longer heeds orders from Jerusalem. Republican lawmakers considered “friends of the Likud” are not keen on yet another US entanglement in the Middle East. The Democrats, for their part, are up until their heads in electing a presidential candidate. At an Oct. 3 meeting in his office with a bipartisan congressional delegation, Netanyahu talked about the great importance of bipartisan support. “The bipartisan support for Israel is a mainstay of our national security,” he said, stressing, “It is not something that we just say pro forma. It is deep and abiding.”