On November 9, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu will visit the White House following a year of acrimony stemming from sharp differences over the Iran nuclear deal. As the administration heads into its final year, a full reset for the bilateral relationship is unlikely. All the same, both sides could take various steps aimed at stabilizing, or recalibrating, ties in a manner that avoids future collisions. And preliminary indications suggest both sides want to repair ties. Allowing for possible surprises, the upcoming visit will be guided by the following issues.

Iran Deal Aftermath: The Direction of U.S.-Israel Ties

Unlike during his March U.S. visit, Netanyahu is no longer seeking to persuade lawmakers to overturn the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal is known. Last week, during his own U.S. visit, Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon publicly affirmed that Israel understands the deal will be carried out. Also, whereas this summer the prime minister refused to discuss a security upgrade with the United States, believing this would compromise Israel’s principled opposition to the deal, now Netanyahu is willing to talk. As for the U.S. angle, in the run-up to Congress’s JCPOA vote, Obama sought to woo lawmakers by publicly pledging that the security upgrade talks would follow rapidly and smoothly.

Two sets of issues, resources and capabilities, will likely be covered during the visit. On resources, one focus will be on the ten-year extension of the 2007 memorandum of understanding (MOU), a document that covers U.S. foreign aid to Israel. A key question will be whether the United States agrees to provide the specific top-line figure, and how it compares to the current MOU level — approximately $3 billion a year in military assistance, or a total of about $30 billion over the ten-year period. Notably, Netanyahu seems to have wanted to have this discussion with Obama himself, rather than letting Yaalon handle it during his visit.

As for capabilities, media reports suggest that, in preparing for the prime minister’s visit, Yaalon asked his counterpart, U.S. secretary of defense Ashton Carter, for military hardware such as a squadron of F-15 jets and V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor planes. For his part, Obama, writing publicly to key members of Congress, highlighted the extent of U.S. military assistance to Israel, noting that Israel will be the first country to receive the F-35 fifth-generation fighter next year and elaborating on different forms of assistance for Israeli missile defense.

Read the article in full in Washington Institute for Near East Policy