But critics said Netanyahu had suffered a resounding defeat after a lobbying drive that damaged Israel’s relations with the White House.

“An overwhelming majority of the American public sees eye to eye with us on the danger posed by Iran”, Netanyahu said. Congress should then endorse that statement.

Netanyahu’s criticism of the Iran deal has brought promises of increased defence assistance from Washington. In it, he made further security assurances, pledging, among other guarantees, to increase missile defense systems and boost tunnel detection.

But the former finance minister also ridiculed Netanyahu’s reaction, and warned that with Netanyahu in the Prime Minister’s Office, there would be no real rapprochement with the US. An high-ranking associate of the prime minister told Israel’s Ynet News that the campaign strategy in going all out against the deal was more to sway public opinion and undermine its legitimacy, in which Israel succeeded in some degree. He spoke intensely on the floor of Congress in March to urge American legislators to oppose the agreement. And Israel is an ally of the US.

This regrettable breach in the Israeli-American relationship need never have occurred.

Netanyahu, in a meeting Tuesday with peace advocates, said that he was “prepared to go to Ramallah or anywhere else right now to meet and hold direct negotiations without preconditions”.

Commenting in the mass circulation daily Yediot Ahronot, Orly Azoulay, the paper’s Washington correspondent, said Netanyahu had emerged from his campaign against the Iran deal isolated, diplomatically marginalised and shunned by administration officials.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama was assured that Congress would uphold the Iran deal after Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland became the 34th senator supporting the deal. According to the British Parliamant’s rules, any petition that reaches 100,000 signatures or more, must be debated by the country’s lawmakers. There was nothing extra essential, he advised the members of Congress, than answering their questions on the Iranian nuclear deal, nevertheless lengthy it took.