The Israeli politician who became Netanyahu’s top Trump whisperer

That man was Ron Dermer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidant and the manager of Israel’s relationship with America—and by extension, Trump. Most Americans don’t know his name and he rarely speaks publicly in Israel. But he is one of the most influential American-born Israeli politicians in the nation’s history and has been key to maintaining U.S. support for the war and cutting a deal to end it largely on Israel’s terms.

Dermer has played the role of Trump whisperer—during both this term and the president’s first. Born and raised in Florida, Dermer speaks Trump’s language, say people who have worked with him. Netanyahu, in his 2022 memoir, recalled how Dermer used golf terminology when talking to Trump.

“‘Peace with the Emirates is a 5-foot putt. Peace with the Saudis is a 30-foot putt. And peace with the Palestinians is a hole-in-one through a brick wall,’" Netanyahu recalled.

But his influence doesn’t just stem from an ability to speak Trump’s language; it is the fruit of a more-than-decadelong effort by Dermer that bet Israel’s most important relationship on support from the American right and evangelicals, at the expense of Democrats. That bet has won Netanyahu’s government strong support from the Trump administration during the war, when it was facing increasing international isolation over the growing humanitarian toll in Gaza. It also hemmed in Israeli leaders when Trump demanded that they back his peace plan.

The Wall Street Journal spoke to more than two dozen people, including former and current Israeli, U.S., and Arab officials, about how Dermer helped shape the U.S.-Israel relationship. Dermer, who serves as Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article.

Netanyahu said in September that Dermer plans to leave office soon, bowing out of a government career that kept him at the prime minister’s side for over two decades.

In the months leading up to the Gaza deal, he was in Washington, D.C., at least once a month. In the week before Trump’s announcement, he sat for hours with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, hammering out the plan. He played the leading role in getting last-minute changes that favored Israel and angered Arab officials who had committed to backing it.

Dermer’s approach to U.S. relations at times broke from decades of diplomacy that have bound the U.S. and Israel together. Israeli leaders and pro-Israel Americans historically worked to keep support for the Jewish state a bipartisan issue in Congress. But Dermer believed Republicans, and especially evangelicals, were a key constituency to help bolster Israeli interests.

“People have to understand that the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States is the evangelical Christians," Dermer said in 2021. “If you look just at numbers you should be spending a lot more time doing outreach to evangelical Christians than you would do to Jews."

Yarden Golan, who served as Dermer’s chief of staff from 2015 to 2024, said maintaining bipartisan support was always one of Dermer’s guiding principles. “Ron often said that you can’t fly a plane with one wing," Golan said.

Dermer’s strategy came to a head while he served as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021. He did things that Democrats and some American Jews worried reflected more loyalty to Netanyahu and his right-wing agenda than to the overall U.S.-Israel relationship.

In 2012, while serving as a senior adviser to Netanyahu, he helped organize a trip to Israel for Mitt Romney during the Republican’s presidential run against Barack Obama, fueling perceptions he was lobbying for Romney. In 2013, he spoke at a Republican Jewish Coalition event organized by the late casino mogul and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson to vet Republican presidential candidates.

In 2015, Dermer and John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House at the time, worked together to bring Netanyahu to address Congress and speak against the Iran nuclear deal in defiance of President Obama. Subsequently, Dermer, who wrote the speech, became persona non grata on the Hill among Democrats, according to people familiar with the matter.

The fallout was long-lasting. The Biden team repeatedly brought up complaints about this speech to Israelis as late as 2021, according to a former Israeli official, who added that it was a sore point for the Americans.

But the strategy appears to have paid off with Trump back in office. Still, many supporters of Israel worry about what it will mean for Israel when a Democrat next comes to power—especially after a war that many in the party opposed.

“When every election in the U.S. is basically a coin toss, for a state like Israel that is so heavily reliant on its alliance with the U.S. to have bet on one party is an incredibly risky thing to do," said Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis, a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

The humanitarian crisis resulting from the Gaza war has pushed Democrats even further away from Israel. In some ways, Dermer’s strategy may have forced Netanyahu to end the war because Israel couldn’t afford to risk losing Trump’s support. Without it, there was no one left on the other side to take up Israel’s cause.

“There is nowhere else for Bibi to go," said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If Trump turns on Bibi, then the investment in the evangelicals and the Republicans will be misplaced."

Dermer was born in Miami Beach, and his father and his brother were Democratic mayors of the city. His father died when Dermer, now 54, was 13. He shares an alma mater with Trump: Wharton Business School. He also attended the University of Oxford. He didn’t serve in the Israeli military, which is unusual in a country where military service is seen as key to a political career.

Dermer got his career in Israel started by analyzing polls for Natan Sharansky, a Soviet dissident who founded a political party in Israel in the 1990s. Sharansky, who later wrote a book with Dermer, introduced the young man working for him to Netanyahu in 1999.

Netanyahu seemed irritated after the first meeting, calling Dermer too negative, Sharansky said. But Sharansky advised the prime minister to listen to Dermer and they met a second time. Dermer went to work for Netanyahu after that.

“Bibi became very close to him and depended on his thinking and logic and gave him a lot of responsibilities," Sharansky said. Dermer is described as extremely smart, even by his critics.

Netanyahu trusts few people, and those who are perceived as political threats have often been pushed out or defanged. Netanyahu liked that Dermer had no political ambitions or voter base in Israel. The pair have never had a falling-out, and some people close to them say Netanyahu sees their relationship like that of a father and son.

Throughout most of his career, Dermer has been a behind-the-scenes player. The impending end of Dermer’s career as a government official came as he was pushed further into the Israeli spotlight. Netanyahu appointed him in February to lead the Israeli negotiating team for Gaza talks. Hostage families and some mediators were pushing for a deal, and believed Netanyahu and Dermer were an obstacle.

Dermer got off to a rocky start in the negotiations, clashing with Egyptian and Arab officials, who saw him as an ideological appointment who stalled progress, although relations with some counterparts later improved.

The role made him a target of protesters in Israel, with critics, including former Israeli officials, arguing that Netanyahu and Dermer were prolonging the war for the prime minister’s political survival—allegations Netanyahu denies.

Israeli hostage families openly called for his resignation and said they struggled to secure meetings with him. When they did meet, it didn’t go well.

“He didn’t let us say a word," said Yehuda Cohen, the father of a recently released Gaza hostage who met Dermer for an hour and a half in early 2024 and said he remembered feeling as if he was being lectured.

A spokesman for Dermer said the minister had met with hostage families dozens of times since the start of the war, and declined to comment on the contents of private conversations.

Protesters followed his family on vacations and stood outside his home shouting their dissatisfaction daily. His wife, Rhoda, has long urged him to leave politics, people close to him said. Dermer’s family had had enough and urged him to step down.

At Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday, where about 500,000 Israelis had gathered, Witkoff drew loud boos from the crowd when he thanked Netanyahu and Dermer for their role in the cease-fire and hostage deal. They cheered when Witkoff mentioned Trump.

Some think the criticism of Dermer is unfounded.

Yaakov Katz, a former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post and a Netanyahu critic, took to X to defend Dermer in recent weeks.

“History will remember Dermer for what he has done—for his role in reshaping Israel’s alliances, keeping the country secure and expanding our ties in the Middle East," Katz said. “The noise of the moment will fade, but the record of his service won’t."