In the middle of all this, Israeli intelligence services caught signs of secret direct talks between the U.S. and Iran. Netanyahu was furious and publicly complained that Iran had gotten “closer and closer to nuclear bombs" under Obama. A senior Israeli official explains that the prime minister only said that to warn Obama against conceding too much to Iran, but to many spectators, it looked like another attempt to hurt the president in the elections. Netanyahu’s comment soon became the center of an anti-Obama ad campaign in Florida.

Still, if Netanyahu wasn’t actually meddling, why didn’t he make any real effort to dismiss the accusations? In the months leading up to the election, say two former aides to the prime minister, Ron Dermer repeatedly presented Netanyahu with polls showing that Obama was vulnerable. Multiple senior Israeli and American officials testify that Dermer's analysis—which Netanyahu highly appreciated—was that Obama would likely end up a one-term president. And on Election Day, one former staffer says, Netanyahu and Dermer "were in a complete euphoria. Even hours before the exit polls, Dermer was still explaining to people in the office why Romney was going to win." (Dermer denies this.)

Netanyahu, this staffer adds, doesn’t understand what motivates Hispanic voters in the United States. Henrique Cymerman, a Portuguese-born Israeli journalist, says that he once talked to Netanyahu about Israel's failure to connect to the Hispanic community, and Bibi replied: "I'm aware of this problem, and it's keeping me up at night.”

When the election results finally came in, Netanyahu and Dermer were genuinely taken aback. It wasn’t just that Obama had won, it was how. He beat Romney in almost every swing state and received almost 70 percent of the Jewish vote, despite the unprecedented effort to portray him as anti-Israel.

Suddenly, all those accusations about Netanyahu’s interference in the elections—accusations he had done so little to downplay—were causing real panic in the prime minister's office. The morning after the election, Netanyahu invited Shapiro, now the U.S. ambassador to Israel, over for hamburgers. Shapiro, an Illinois native who is fluent in Hebrew and very popular in Israel, had worked for Obama since 2007 and was close with both Netanyahu and Dermer. Netanyahu used to ask him to join him in first class on flights to the U.S., even if he and his aides were conducting sensitive discussions. Netanyahu believed that a positive meeting with the ambassador was a necessary first step in restoring his relationship with the White House.

When Shapiro arrived, Netanyahu asked his official videographers to film the two of them congratulating the president. On camera, Netanyahu found all the right words. He explained that "the security cooperation between our countries is rock-solid." And then there was Shapiro standing by Netanyahu’s side, saying little, smiling awkwardly. His White House colleagues called it "Dan's Hostage Video.”

Netanyahu’s mood changed, however, when it became clear that an agreement would actually be struck. On November 8th, Secretary of State John Kerry stopped at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv on his way to nuclear talks in Geneva. Kerry and Netanyahu were meeting frequently during this period, as part of the secretary's attempt to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Usually, they held a short press availability before each talk, but this time, Kerry feared a public confrontation and asked that they keep the cameras away.

Netanyahu informed Kerry that, as far as he was concerned, the photo opportunity was still happening. "Wait right here,” he snapped at the secretary before going out in front of the cameras alone to slam the Obama administration for offering Iran "the deal of the century.” His face red from anger and his voice off-kilter, Netanyahu declared that “Israel is not obliged by this agreement” (no agreement had yet been signed) and that “Israel will do everything it needs to protect itself.”

When Netanyahu returned, Kerry asked if he wanted the discussion to be in the presence of senior aides or not. “I don’t care,” Bibi muttered. “Do whatever you want.” Kerry told everyone to leave the room. "It was the worst meeting between an Israeli leader and an American secretary of state I've seen in decades," said a veteran of such discussions.

In March of that year, Dermer pulled off his greatest coup. Working behind the administration’s back with Speaker of the House John Boehner, he arranged for Netanyahu to make the case against a nuclear deal in front of a joint session of Congress. When some of his own senior defense officials warned that the speech would cause irreparable damage to his relationship with Obama, Netanyahu brushed them off. "Netanyahu once said during a cabinet discussion I participated in that 'what the president thinks about us is important, but it's more important what the young soldier at the entrance to the White House thinks about us,’” explains another former Israeli minister. “He believed he could beat Obama through American public opinion.”

But the tactic backfired. In fact, all the things that Netanyahu saw as helpful to his cause were used against him. The speech before Congress may have looked like a sign of strength to Netanyahu’s supporters, but it allowed the Obama administration to portray his opposition to the nuclear deal as politically motivated—part of a ploy to make Bibi look tough in advance of Israel’s upcoming elections. Netanyahu’s opponents also recirculated an old video of him testifying before Congress in support of the Iraq War. Back in 2003, Bibi had used his testimony to show the Israeli public how much influence he had in Washington. Now, his appearance seemed to prove Obama's point that the opponents of the Iran deal were "the same people who got us into Iraq."

In early September, the Iran deal passed Congress, and the geopolitical dynamic in the Middle East was fundamentally reconfigured. For the first time in decades, Iran was no longer the most isolated country in the region. It was internationally recognized and powerful. Netanyahu's office tried to claim that he "never believed the deal could be stopped through Congress,” but even some of his allies believe he was convinced his speech would have more of an impact.

"Netanyahu comes from a home environment that admired power. His world is one of strong and weak, where everything is measured on a power scale," says a former Israeli minister who was close to him for decades. Obama's victory on the Iran deal was a personal humiliation for Netanyahu. Not only did he appear weak by losing the battle, but he also lost his partnership with the American president—this time for good.

When the two met at the White House earlier this week, both sides tried to pretend that things were copacetic. Netanyahu brought up the possibility of a two-state solution. Obama promised to boost security aid to Israel. But a U.S. official told us not to have any illusions: "The president and Bibi are never going to be friends. We're never going to get over Iran."

A year from now, it will be Netanyahu who gets to congratulate the next American president. And while Israeli officials believe that any of the leading candidates would make a better partner than Obama, the relationship will never be an easy one. Hillary Clinton recently wrote in the Jewish press about her commitment to Israel’s security and promised to have Bibi over to the White House within her first month in office. But a Clinton White House will likely include many veterans of her husband’s administration, as well as Obama’s, and they’re not likely to forget their past dealings with Netanyahu.

Nor is it a given that Netanyahu would fare much better with a Republican president, as is widely assumed. After all, both Bush administrations were quite tough on Israel when it came to their policy on settlements, and in 1990, Secretary of State James Baker banned Netanyahu from entering the State Department after he publicly claimed the first President Bush's Middle East policy was "based on lies and distortions." A new Republican in the White House wouldn’t give Bibi’s government “carte blanche,” says Michael Koplow, the policy director at the Israel Policy Forum. A GOP president would still put pressure on Netanyahu, just “in a less public way than Obama did.”

Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday he would not pursue a two-state solution in the Middle East today if he were president.

"I don't think the conditions exist for that today," the Florida Republican and presidential candidate said during a question-and-answer session at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "That's the ideal outcome, but the conditions for a two-state solution at this moment do not exist."

Rubio blamed a disorganized and irresponsible Palestinian government for the stalemate with Israel on statehood. He also said the Palestinians had scuttled two prior offers for peace with their Jewish neighbors.

"They teach their children that it's a glorious thing to kill Jews," he said