As the United States and Iran reescalate their fighting, curiously it is not Iran but Turkey that has topped the list of Israel\u2019s talking points in recent days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deeply troubled by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s hints that he may sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. These state-of-the-art aircraft could significantly erode Israel\u2019s military advantage in the region. Netanyahu is clearly alarmed about Trump\u2019s growing admiration for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ahead of the NATO summit that took place in Ankara earlier this week, Trump even claimed that he was coming only because Erdo\u011fan was hosting it.<\/p>\n
In a recent interview with CNN<\/a>, Netanyahu called Turkey \u201ca regime that\u2019s infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States.\u201d During the interview, he confirmed that he explicitly told Trump that the sale of advanced fighter jets to Turkey would upset the power balance in the Middle East. The U.S. president has been dismissive of Netanyahu\u2019s concerns, claiming<\/a> that he personally persuaded the Turkish leader not to join Iran\u2019s fight against Israel.<\/p>\n As the United States and Iran reescalate their fighting, curiously it is not Iran but Turkey that has topped the list of Israel\u2019s talking points in recent days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deeply troubled by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s hints that he may sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. These state-of-the-art aircraft could significantly erode Israel\u2019s military advantage in the region. Netanyahu is clearly alarmed about Trump\u2019s growing admiration for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ahead of the NATO summit that took place in Ankara earlier this week, Trump even claimed that he was coming only because Erdo\u011fan was hosting it.<\/p>\n In a recent interview with CNN<\/a><\/span>, Netanyahu called Turkey \u201ca regime that\u2019s infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States.\u201d During the interview, he confirmed that he explicitly told Trump that the sale of advanced fighter jets to Turkey would upset the power balance in the Middle East. The U.S. president has been dismissive of Netanyahu\u2019s concerns, claiming<\/a><\/span> that he personally persuaded the Turkish leader not to join Iran\u2019s fight against Israel.<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s security concerns over the planned F-35 sale have genuine merit. The Turkish government\u2019s rhetoric on Israel is increasingly extreme and inflammatory. The fragile relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated even further since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and Israel\u2019s subsequent invasion of Gaza. In exceptionally malicious remarks<\/a><\/span> in response to Israel\u2019s regional actions, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan asserted on July 2: \u201cThese people have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear<\/a><\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n It is not only Israel that is threatened by Turkey. Ankara is increasingly bellicose in its maritime claims in the Aegean<\/span> and eastern Mediterranean, directly threatening Greece. At the same time, Erdogan has become increasingly repressive at home<\/span>, jailing political opponents and journalists on trumped-up charges without compunction. If Russia\u2019s trajectory is anything to go by, a regime that becomes hyper-repressive domestically eventually becomes very aggressive beyond its borders.<\/p>\n Then there is Turkey\u2019s past misconduct as a member of NATO, including its purchase of a Russian S-400 missile defense system and its protracted veto of Swedish membership<\/span> in the alliance. NATO member states may choose to overlook Turkey\u2019s destructive<\/span> tactics for the sake of unity, but this doesn\u2019t mean that other actors don\u2019t have to worry about Ankara<\/span> and its regional ambitions.<\/p>\n Yet the geopolitical validity of Netanyahu\u2019s warning is severely compromised by his own fight for domestic political survival<\/span>. Ahead of an impending Israeli election, Netanyahu has a clear incentive to inflate the Turkish threat. It is no coincidence that just days before Trump\u2019s Ankara announcement, Netanyahu\u2019s coalition cabinet suddenly passed a resolution formally recognizing the Armenian genocide<\/a><\/span>, a rightful step that Israel had cynically withheld for decades to protect its previous strategic alliance with Ankara. While it is easy to forget that Israel had enjoyed highly functional relations with Turkey for decades until the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident<\/a> in <\/span>2010 (for which Israel duly apologized<\/a>)<\/span>, the two countries do still maintain a semblance of diplomatic relations today. But for how much longer?<\/p>\n This sudden hawkishness toward Turkey exposes a glaring double standard in Israel\u2019s broader regional strategy. Israel has a long-standing policy of opposing the sale of military hardware to potential adversaries that could upend the regional balance. Back in 1981, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin lobbied furiously<\/a><\/span> and intensively to prevent the Reagan administration from selling AWACS radar planes and F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. U.S. President Ronald Reagan wrote<\/a><\/span> in his diary: \u201cIt must be plain to them, they\u2019ve never had a better friend of Israel in the W.H. than they have now.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet in recent years, Netanyahu\u2019s opposition to the Trump administration\u2019s plans to sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia has been conspicuously muted. Back in 2020, Netanyahu was perfectly content to maintain quiet security cooperation with Saudi Arabia while turning a blind eye to its nuclear ambitions<\/span>, even defending the Saudi regime after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi because he was seeking to expand the Abraham Accords by normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n Yet today, Netanyahu appears on CNN to castigate Erdogan over locking up political opponents and journalists.\u00a0That\u2019s another conspicuous double standard: Russian President Vladimir Putin has been much more notorious than Erdogan for having his political opponents jailed, poisoned, and otherwise killed, but that has never prevented Netanyahu from touting his special friendship with the Russian leader.<\/p>\n Netanyahu also spoke during the CNN interview of Erdogan\u2019s \u201caggressive aspirations,\u201d claiming that he wants \u201cto restore the Ottoman Empire.\u201d Yet Israel\u2019s critics see Netanyahu acting in an eerily similar manner. The Israeli leader has vowed<\/a><\/span> to change \u201cthe face of the Middle East\u201d and to \u201credraw\u201d the map of the region, insisting that Israel will keep occupying parts of Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. Meanwhile, his far-right coalition partners mirror that aggressive rhetoric: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared<\/a><\/span> at a Jerusalem Day rally in May that it was time for Israel to annex the entirety of the West Bank, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has openly expressed<\/a><\/span> his ambition of establishing settlements in Lebanon.<\/p>\n The fact remains that increased tensions with Turkey serve Netanyahu\u2019s political interests ahead of Israel\u2019s election. A case in point was<\/span>\u00a0Netanyahu\u2019s interview<\/a><\/span>\u00a0at the end of June on Israel\u2019s Channel 14, a dependable pro-Bibi echo chamber. On being asked whether Israel\u2019s various wars will soon be coming to an end, his response<\/a><\/span> was telling<\/span>: \u201cThe war will never end, do you want to live in the Middle East? Be strong.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s international standing has cratered because its prime minister believes that his reelection prospects are strengthened by fostering a permanent us-against-them mindset<\/span>. Netanyahu\u2019s <\/span>political survival demands the preservation of his hard-line coalition at almost any price<\/span>. A high-profile confrontation with Erdogan\u2014whose bogeyman image, not just in Israel, is entirely earned\u2014plays well with his base, allowing him to argue that only he can protect<\/span> Israel\u2019s vital interests against a hostile world.<\/p>\n Compounding this strategy is the fact that Netanyahu\u2019s regional credibility has been shattered by the recent war with Iran. He has severely damaged his standing with the Trump administration over failed claims that the clerical regime could be easily removed from power. In his June 30 interview with Channel 14, he claimed without evidence that he personally authorized operations inside Iran to save Israel<\/a><\/span> from atomic bombs that were \u201calready in their hands.\u201d Ironically, if it were actually true that Iran had obtained a nuclear weapon under his watch, it would be a damning, final indictment of Netanyahu\u2019s lifelong pledge to prevent a nuclear Iran.<\/p>\n This leaves Israel caught in a dangerous variation of the dilemma illustrated in Hilaire Belloc\u2019s famous 1907 poem, \u201cMatilda, Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death.\u201d In Belloc\u2019s cautionary tale, a young girl continually fabricates emergencies for attention, only for her neighbors to ignore her desperate screams when a real fire breaks out, assuming it is just another one of her \u201cdreadful lies.\u201d<\/p>\n The potential sale of advanced F-35s to Turkey would mark a genuine change to the regional balance of power.\u00a0Netanyahu is due to meet with Trump in the coming weeks and will spell out the threat as well as his long-standing anxiety over Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Yet because Netanyahu has cried wolf so many times to score cheap domestic points, it is understandable if both his allies and detractors simply aren\u2019t listening anymore. The more worrying reality for Netanyahu is that the Trump administration has stopped listening, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the United States and Iran reescalate their fighting, curiously it is not Iran but Turkey that has topped the list of Israel\u2019s talking points in recent days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deeply troubled by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s hints that he may sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. These state-of-the-art aircraft could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11611],"tags":[25368,12544,7758,13848,4450,7731,8995,5522,2852,4960],"class_list":["post-35506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spyballoon-global-news","tag-crying","tag-editors-picks","tag-elections","tag-homepage_regional_middle_east_africa","tag-israel","tag-israels","tag-netanyahu","tag-turkey","tag-weapons","tag-wolf"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/israel-turkey-netanyahu-erdogan-GettyImages-2206556123-e1783679095939.jpg",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"SPYBALLOON GLOBAL NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"As the United States and Iran reescalate their fighting, curiously it is not Iran but Turkey that has topped the list of Israel\u2019s talking points in recent days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deeply troubled by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s hints that he may sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. These state-of-the-art aircraft could…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35508,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35506\/revisions\/35508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}