Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be meeting with Mitt Romney, his long-time-ally-turned-Trump-critic, during the US senator's scheduled trip to the Middle East.
According to The Times of Israel, neither has Netanyahu scheduled a meeting with Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is heading to the Middle East together with Romney.
The two senators announced on Tuesday that they would travel to Israel and Jordan to bolster relations with regional allies.
"It is critical that we maintain and strengthen our alliances with key partners in the region", read a joint statement from Romney and Murphy. "Over the next several days, we look forward to discussing shared priorities and strategies to meet those challenges".
Netanyahu and Romney reportedly worked together at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s. The Israeli PM, who has had a patchy relationship with Barack Obama, openly endorsed the Republican hopeful during the 2012 campaign. He has since become one of Donald Trump's closest confidants and saw the Trump administration support him on several contentious foreign policy issues.
However, the Utah senator has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump since the 2016 primary election; he argued that Trump was unfit for office and later criticised his policy as president for its perceived divisiveness.
Most recently, Romney launched a verbal attack at the POTUS following the release of the Mueller report, saying he was "sickened" at its account of Trump's "dishonesty and misdirection".
"Reading the report is a sobering revelation of how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles of the founders" of the United States, Romney said via Twitter.
Trump quickly retorted with a throwback video that showed Romney's 2012 defeat to Barack Obama and Trump's triumph four years later. "If Mitt Romney spent the same energy fighting Barack Obama as he does fighting Donald Trump, he could have won the race (maybe)!" he wrote.
