One under-appreciated thing about Mr Donald Trump is that he knows how to help a friend. Rarely in the annals of modern democracy has a US president done so much to assist a foreign leader to be re-elected. It is even harder to find an instance where it has made the difference between defeat and victory.

Mr Benjamin Netanyahu almost certainly owes his re-election to Mr Trump. Just 24 hours before Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday, Mr Trump declared Iran's Revolutionary Guards to be a terrorist organisation. In the previous weeks, he recognised Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights and defied convention not to meddle in elections by sending his secretary of state on a supportive trip to Israel ahead of the polls. That is on top of Mr Trump's shift last year of the US embassy to Jerusalem.