It was 2:14 a.m., and Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to know whether we were tired.
He had just turned 77. Members of his staff were dozing on couches and chairs. Netanyahu was alert, focused, and apparently in no hurry to end the night. We admitted that we were probably more tired than he was.
“You’re not the first to say that.”
A little earlier, his staff had surprised him with a birthday celebration: krembos, the chocolate-covered marshmallow treats; along with chocolates and gummies; and an individual tiramisu for the prime minister. He ate it with evident enjoyment.
Outside, aides had been searching for “the chair,” the one he preferred sitting in. Even at this hour, the small machinery of looking after a prime minister kept turning.
Some of those around him had spent years at his side. They brought drinks, attended to him, and spoke with the conviction that he would win again. They believed Israel needed him. Netanyahu himself would give us a less comfortable assessment of the race.
How did it feel to be 77? “Feels fine. If you know what you’re about, and you have good health and a lot of energy, and a purpose.”
That word, “purpose,” came up repeatedly during the next half-hour. So did Iran, US President Donald Trump, and the danger Netanyahu saw in handing the country to someone else. With the October 27 election approaching, he was asking voters to let him finish work that he regards as the reason for his political life.
His partnership with Trump was central to that request. We wanted to know how his case would hold up when the American president was someone else.
Netanyahu: Iran does not want me elected
Could Iran attack before the election? Could Israel strike first?
Netanyahu said military intelligence and the Mossad had delivered “clear warnings” that Iran and its proxies were considering ways to influence the vote.
“They don’t want me elected.”
He suggested rockets or drones could be used to puncture Israelis’ confidence in the military campaign’s achievements. “If they do, it’ll be a big mistake because we’ll respond with force and might they cannot even imagine.”
People on his team, speaking on background, separately told us that current senior defense officials had contacted Netanyahu to say he needed to win because Israel’s enemies would see his defeat as their success. They also described serious security threats in the near future. That account of private conversations has not been independently verified.
Netanyahu moved quickly through the destruction of enemy capabilities and the killing of their leaders. October 7 was the starting point of his account of Israel’s recovery; the failures that permitted the attack under his government received little attention.
Iran still had capabilities, we pointed out. He acknowledged that it did. For as long as its present leadership survived, he argued, it would try to rebuild its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“My purpose is to break Iran’s murderous regime, remove the threat from our heads, and have multiple peace treaties.”
Finishing the job, by that definition, would require an outcome extending far beyond another successful strike.
Netanyahu says he can withstand a post-Trump US, expand Arab ties
Trump’s recent endorsement was quite an item for Netanyahu’s campaign literature: the American president wanted him reelected.
Netanyahu said the decision had surprised him. The motivation had not. He described a president who saw Iran as a danger to American cities and believed he had one reliable partner in confronting it.
We raised Vice President JD Vance’s refusal to offer an endorsement of his own. Vance had also made clear he was not opposing Netanyahu. Still, the question reached beyond this election. What would happen to the relationship when Trump left office?
Netanyahu’s answer began with the remaining opportunity under Trump, then moved to the possibility of a less friendly administration. He disliked that formulation.
“That’s really laundering words,” he said.
“What happens if you have a hostile administration? Who will withstand the pressures? Who will stand up to them? And I think the answer in both cases is the same.”
He meant himself. Experience with Washington, he argued, qualified him to make the most of Trump’s friendship and to resist a successor’s demands. Palestinian statehood was the example he returned to, describing it as the prospect of an Iranian terror base overlooking Israel’s population centers.
“You’re not going to withstand the pressure by succumbing to it, because then you’re finished.”
An Israeli government elected now will have to prepare for an America whose politics are already changing. Netanyahu placed considerable weight on the character of the man sitting across from the American president. He spent more time explaining how he would withstand American pressure than how he would broaden American support.
He did identify three tasks: strengthen the existing American base of support, fight the information war, and widen Israel’s international partnerships. India was one example. In the Middle East, he said, more Arab governments were interested in relations with Israel after seeing it act against Iran.
We tried to get the names. “Since it’s just the three of us, so who are we talking about? Which countries?”
“Well, we’re definitely talking about more than two.”
He gave us a number. Later, it grew to “many more than two.”
He traced the beginnings of the Abraham Accords to his confrontation with former president Barack Obama over the Iran nuclear agreement, recalling calls from Arab officials impressed by his willingness to challenge Washington.
Trump’s presidency had helped turn those contacts into agreements. Further military action against Iran, he argued, had made Israel still more attractive as a partner.
We challenged his suggestion that Arab leaders were untroubled by his coalition partners. Their reservations, we said, were expressed privately too.
“Most of them couldn’t care less.”
He went further: “And they couldn’t care less about the Palestinian issue, and they said, ‘We have to say it, but we don’t mean it.’”
That is his account of their private words. Their public position remains quite different: Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments reaffirmed support for Palestinian statehood in a joint statement on October 16.
Qatar, Qatargate, and Netanyahu’s defense against allegations of influence
Qatar brought the discussion of Israel’s standing abroad uncomfortably close to home.
We asked whether it should again mediate on matters involving Israel. Netanyahu had accused Doha of spreading hatred of the Jewish state; Israel had nevertheless relied on its role in hostage negotiations.
He maintained that Israel used Qatar because the United States did. He then accused it of driving antisemitism and anti-Zionism in American universities and on social media. “Qatar was one of the engines of our vilification, only one.”
This led him to cite his late father, Benzion Netanyahu, the historian of the Inquisition and modern Zionism. He recalled asking him whether America offered Jews an exception to the recurring dangers of European history.
“There are no exceptions if certain things happen,” he remembered his father replying.
Netanyahu described social upheaval and resentment exposing a visible minority to danger. “The Jews are prominent and weak,” he said, “and that’s a very dangerous place to be in a society.”
His father’s warning still shaped his explanation of America. Israel’s strength, he argued, gave Jews the means to prevent the physical destruction that had so often followed their vilification. He saw the current hostility as a historical danger that better public diplomacy alone could not resolve.
Then he returned to Qatar, offering a military action as his answer to suspicions about his own position.
“They accused me of being pro-Qatar; I attacked Qatar.”
Israel’s September 2025 strike in Doha targeted Hamas leaders. It did not answer the question we put to him next: What about the allegations concerning people in his own circle and their connections to Qatar?
“Except that the judge said there was nothing there.”
He continued: “The judge said it’s a witch hunt. Basically that’s what he said.”
He did not identify the judge or ruling. 'Qatargate' remains under investigation. The affair concerns allegations that aides, including Yonatan Urich, promoted Qatari interests while working for Netanyahu. They deny wrongdoing. Netanyahu has given evidence to police but has not been named a suspect.
Netanyahu argued that others who had worked with Qatar were now attacking him over it. “This is one hoax,” he said, before describing a campaign video mocking successive television controversies as manufactured storms.
“The idea is to divert attention and to mask the real issue in this election.”
He did not say whether Israel would use Qatar as a mediator again.
Who gets to join Netanyahu’s next government - and on what terms?
Netanyahu wants to build his next government with his present partners. On one possible appointment, however, he was explicit. Asked about Itamar Ben-Gvir’s ambition to become defense minister, he said: “I think the next defense minister should be from Likud.”
“But it’s going to be our government. We decide what the policy is.”
The conduct of the present government raised a different test of control. We pressed him on extremist settler violence against Palestinians, pointing to criticism from US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, hardly an unfamiliar face among Israel’s friends.
Netanyahu argued that international coverage distorted the scale of the violence compared with terrorism against Israelis. We persisted: “Huckabee knows that, but not everyone does, right?”
“No, I understand that, believe me.”
“We know you do,” we replied.
“You don’t have to explain it to me. I don’t want vigilantism.”
He rejected extremist Jews who have been taking the law into their own hands. The acts were wrong, he said, did “enormous damage to Israel abroad,” and harmed the reputation of the wider settlement community. He spoke about families killed by terrorists and the sons that those communities had lost in military service.
“That’s why I put the Shin Bet onto this and continue to do that.”
When we asked about bringing opponents into a broader government, the conversation turned to the courtroom.
“Why not have a unity government? Would you agree to sit with him?” we asked, referring to Gadi Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff.
Netanyahu said his opponents had ruled him out because of his corruption trial. “The trial’s collapsed.”
He spoke about what he and his family had endured, the conduct of investigators, and former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit’s testimony. We returned to the political question.
“You would offer them a hand?”
“No, first of all, let me finish this because this is important.”
His objection was to proposals barring an indicted politician from serving as prime minister. Such a law, he argued, would hand prosecutors the power to decide who could govern, removing that choice from voters. He termed it “Iranian Bolshevism.”
Then came a demand concerning the trial itself: “It should be ended right now, and we should start an immediate criminal investigation against those who led it.
“You cannot do this to any citizen, and I’m a citizen, but also you cannot try to destroy democracy with the abuse of state power.”
The trial continues. Netanyahu faces fraud and breach-of-trust charges in three cases, and bribery in Case 4000. He denies wrongdoing. The allegations concern gifts from businessmen, discussions with newspaper publisher Arnon Mozes about favorable coverage in return for steps against rival Israel Hayom, and regulatory favors for Bezeq in exchange for intervention in Walla’s coverage.
Mandelblit, testifying for the defense, has acknowledged investigative steps beyond his approvals while defending his authorization of the investigations and the basis for the bribery charge.
Eventually, he answered the coalition question. If he secured a majority of at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, he would form a government and establish its principles. Others could then accept them and join.
“First principle, no Palestinian state, period.”
He added Israel’s identity as the Jewish nation-state, with minority rights respected; an active security doctrine; a free-market economy; and expanded peace agreements. A broader coalition could follow victory, on terms that he would set.
Explaining his security doctrine, he searched for an English rendering of tachbulot, or stratagems. “My English isn’t that good.” He invoked King James’s translators and the 70 wise men of Alexandria. Biblical translation was one difficulty he was willing to concede.
Victory itself was less certain. We pointed out that polls also showed him struggling to assemble a majority.
“I think right now it’s an even tie. That’s what I see in the big numbers.”
Netanyahu says he wants 'five more terms' as Israel's prime minister
We returned to the birthday. If he won, would this be his last term?
“Oh no, I’m gonna have five more terms.”
He had a proposal for those who described him as worn out or physically inactive. “I invite them to come to the gym with me.” There was a condition: “But they’ll have to do the same thing.”
He recalled a commentator predicting, after his defeat in 1999, that he would not merit a footnote. The commentator was still around, he said; we pointed out that Netanyahu was too. He has had considerable practice reading his political obituaries.
“I don’t need the job. I don’t need the job,” he said. “I’m fueled by a mission.”
He described preventing Iran from acquiring the means to destroy Israel as the work of his adult life. Again came the question he wanted voters to ask: “Who will finish the job?”
It was 2:45 a.m. Netanyahu thanked us for our tenacity. His staff had celebrated another birthday and were expecting another victory; his own assessment still left the election in the balance. After we left, he continued working.
He had turned 77 in the middle of a working night. How much longer he would serve was now a question for the voters.■