Biblical Prophecy • Israel • Last Days

Is Netanyahu Pulling Trump's Strings? The Prophetic Reality Behind the Accusation

The claim that Trump is doing Israel's bidding in the Middle East is everywhere. Scripture offers a very different explanation for what is actually happening — one that predates Netanyahu by three thousand years.

By Kelly Smith

The accusation has become a staple of political commentary across the spectrum: Trump is doing Netanyahu's bidding. The wars in the Middle East, the support for Israel, the pressure on Iran — all of it, according to this narrative, traces back to a foreign prime minister pulling the strings of an American president. Trump, in this telling, is not a leader acting on conviction. He is a puppet.

I want to take this accusation seriously rather than dismiss it, because it touches on real concerns about foreign influence, American sovereignty, and the staggering rise of antisemitism that has accompanied it. But I also want to offer a framework that I believe is far more accurate than the puppet master narrative — one grounded not in political speculation but in thousands of years of prophetic scripture.

The events unfolding in the Middle East right now are not the result of Netanyahu controlling Trump. They are the early stages of the fulfillment of a covenant God made with Abraham roughly four thousand years ago. Understanding that covenant changes everything about how you read the current news cycle.

First, a Word About Antisemitism

Before anything else, I want to go on record clearly: the hatred of any people based on their ethnicity or religion is morally indefensible and historically catastrophic. Every time in history that antisemitism has been allowed to take root and grow, the outcome has been horrifying — for the Jewish people and ultimately for the societies that cultivated it. The current wave of antisemitism rising across the Western world is alarming, and no serious student of history or scripture should be comfortable with where it leads.

Yes, individuals of Jewish background have sometimes wielded financial and political power in ways that caused enormous harm. But that statement is equally true of individuals from every religious, ethnic, and national background throughout human history. Power corrupts people. That is a human problem, not a Jewish one. The moment we attach the behavior of corrupt individuals to an entire people, we have crossed a line that scripture, history, and basic moral reasoning all condemn.

God made a covenant with Abraham and his seed. That covenant has never been revoked. Whatever political disagreements anyone may have with the current government of Israel, the Jewish people remain covenant people with a divine destiny that is still unfolding. Treating them as a monolithic enemy is not only morally wrong — it is scripturally illiterate.

Does the Fruits Test Apply Here?

In our article on the Antichrist accusation, we established the principle Jesus taught: you shall know them by their fruits. Let us apply that same standard here.

A puppet does what his master commands because he has no independent will or power. If Trump were Netanyahu's puppet, we would expect to see a pattern of American interests being subordinated to Israeli interests consistently, a foreign policy that serves Israel first regardless of the cost to America, and a president whose decisions align with Netanyahu's preferences even when those decisions are politically costly at home.

But recall something important. One of the primary reasons the beast system turned so viciously against Trump from the moment he descended that escalator in 2015 is precisely because he was the first major presidential candidate in generations who did not depend on the approval of entrenched power structures to get elected. He had his own resources. He had his own platform. He had direct access to the public. The very people who had praised him for decades turned on him instantly — because they realized they could not control him.

A man the entire establishment could not control is not simultaneously the puppet of a foreign prime minister. The two claims are logically incompatible.

The Promise God Made to Abraham

To understand what is actually driving the events in the Middle East, you have to go back not to the current news cycle but to a covenant recorded in Genesis:

This is a specific, geographic promise. From the river of Egypt — generally understood as the Nile delta region — to the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq. That is an enormous stretch of land covering portions of what is today Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Even at the height of David and Solomon's combined kingdoms — the greatest territorial extent Israel ever achieved — this promise was never fully realized. The land God covenanted to give Abraham's seed has never been fully possessed by them.

God does not make promises He does not keep. If He covenanted to give that land to Abraham's seed, it will happen. The question is not whether but when and through whom.

Scripture points to a specific servant who will oversee the fulfillment of this covenant in the last days — not through military conquest in the traditional sense, but through a combination of diplomatic power, divine intervention, and the collapse of opposing systems. The prophetic case for Trump's role in these events is built on this foundation: he is not acting as Netanyahu's instrument. He is acting — knowingly or not — as God's instrument for the fulfillment of a covenant four thousand years old.

The Modern State of Israel Is Not Yet the Fulfillment

Here is something that surprises many people when they first encounter it in scripture. The modern state of Israel, established in 1948, is not the fulfillment of the gathering prophecies. It is a foundation — a preliminary stage — but it is not the promised gathering.

The prophet Jacob in the Book of Mormon is explicit about the order of events:

The sequence is unmistakable: first they come to the knowledge of Christ, then they are gathered. The Jewish people who established and currently inhabit the modern state of Israel gathered primarily for political, cultural, and economic reasons — not because they recognized Jesus Christ as their Redeemer. The prophesied gathering is still future. It awaits a spiritual awakening among the Jewish people that has not yet occurred.

What exists in Israel today is a foundation being laid — politically, geographically, and institutionally — for what is coming. The servant's role is not merely to support what is already there. It is to create the conditions where the real fulfillment becomes possible: the temple built, the covenant land fully possessed, and eventually the Jewish people themselves coming to recognize their Messiah.

The Temple and the Dome of the Rock

Among the most sensitive subjects in all of Middle Eastern geopolitics is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The third temple — prophesied throughout the Old Testament and referenced in the New Testament and Revelation — must be built on that site. And on that site currently stands the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam's most sacred shrines.

By every human calculation, building a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount is impossible. The geopolitical, religious, and military obstacles are staggering. And yet the prophets did not describe the impossible as optional. The temple will be built.

My belief — grounded in the prophetic pattern of how God's servant accomplishes his work — is that the Dome of the Rock will not come down through war or forced removal. It will be removed through willing cooperation, under the influence of a servant whose divine commission is recognized even by those who do not share his faith. The nations surrounding Israel will recognize the hand of God at work and cooperate with what they understand to be God's will. That is a bold claim. It is also entirely consistent with the pattern of how Cyrus the Great operated — a leader whose authority was recognized even by those who had no obligation to yield to him, because God's hand was visibly upon him.

What Comes After Peace Is Established

The prophets also make clear that the peace established in the land of Israel will not be permanent — at least not immediately. Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 describe an invasion by a great northern power into a land of unwalled villages, a people dwelling in peace and perceived safety. This is the Gog and Magog prophecy, and its timing is significant: it comes after the covenant land has been secured and the people are living in relative peace, not before.

This helps us understand the sequence. The current conflicts and tensions in the Middle East are not Gog and Magog. They are the turbulence that precedes the establishment of peace. The servant secures the land. The temple is built. Peace is established. And then, into that peace, comes the invasion that Ezekiel prophesied — followed ultimately by the appearance of the Antichrist who stands in the temple and declares himself to be God, the abomination of desolation that Christ warned about in Matthew 24.

The full treatment of these events requires far more space than a single article allows. The book addresses them in detail, chapter by chapter, with the full scriptural framework laid out carefully. But the point for this article is this: what looks like chaos and foreign entanglement in the Middle East right now is actually the opening movements of a prophetic sequence that ends with the return of Jesus Christ to the very land where these events are unfolding.

The Instrument, Not the Puppet

Netanyahu does not control Trump. But God's purposes do — whether Trump fully understands that yet or not. Isaiah described a servant called by name before he knew the God who called him. Cyrus fulfilled his mission for Israel without fully grasping the divine hand directing his steps. The marred servant of Isaiah acts as God's instrument long before the world recognizes what is happening.

Trump's support for Israel's security, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, his work to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, his pressure on Iran — none of this is Netanyahu calling the shots. It is a man acting in alignment with a prophetic mission whose full dimensions he may not yet completely understand, but whose direction is unmistakably consistent with what the prophets described thousands of years ago.

The question is not who is pulling whose strings. The question is whether you recognize whose hand is actually moving the pieces on the board. And that hand has been moving them since God first spoke to Abraham in the plains of Mamre and promised him a land his descendants have never yet fully possessed.

Kelly Smith is the author of The First Horseman: God's Chosen Servant. He is a lifelong student of biblical prophecy and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

© 2026 Kelly Smith. All rights reserved.

This work represents personal spiritual insights and scriptural interpretations. All sales are final for digital products due to immediate access.

This site is not a part of the Facebook website or Facebook Inc. Additionally, this site is not endorsed by Facebook, Google, or any other platform in any way. Facebook is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc. Google is a trademark of Google LLC.