Now, with this expensive election victory in hand, Netanyahu has sought to take back some of his costly words, blandly telling an incredulous NBC interviewer he never stopped supporting a two-state solution, and then gathering a handful of Arab mayors to say he apologized “if” he had hurt the feelings of any of Israel’s Arab citizens by raising alarms about their voting patterns.

The prime minister has had limited success in healing wounds so far: His non-apology was firmly rejected by the leader of the Joint List, the majority-Arab party whose electoral success was the implicit target of the prime minister’s race-baiting, and the White House shrugged off Netanyahu’s re-avowal of a two-state solution. Indeed, the prospects of a reconciliation with the United States in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process seem grim.

But oddly enough, considering that Netanyahu has spent much of his career alternately warning the world about a war with Iran and threatening to start one himself, the one area where he is subtly signaling that he could give up ground is … a deal with Tehran.