US President George W. Bush welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the White House on Monday, with Democrats poised to control Congress and perhaps push for dialogue with Israel's enemies, Iran and Syria.
Olmert arrives in the United States days after legislative elections that altered the US political landscape.
After the Democrats' victory on Tuesday, which will give them control of both houses of Congress in January, backers of a more open foreign policy should be able to make themselves better heard.
The likely future chairmen of congressional committees charged with international affairs, Joseph Biden and Tom Lantos, for example, have for years denounced what they saw as the rigidity of Bush's Republican administration with regard to Iran, Syria and North Korea.
The November 13 summit, which comes six months after Olmert's first meeting with Bush at the White House, has been described in Israel as "a down-to-business meeting" on Iran.
With Tehran continuing to reject international calls to halt its nuclear enrichment efforts, Israel has in recent months moved the Iranian threat to the top of its agenda.
But Israel could have reason for concern about the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a ferocious opponent of dialogue. His expected successor, Robert Gates, has signed onto a report calling for dialogue with Iran.
Backed by the United States, Israel has said sanctions are necessary following Tehran's failure to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which Israel, the United States and several European powers say hides a secret nuclear weapons programme -- despite Iranian insistence that it is for peaceful purposes.
Israel -- widely considered the Middle East's sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power -- considers Iran its chief enemy, pointing to calls from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
In Los Angeles on Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Tehran was merely buying time by negotiating with the international community, and warned of a regional arms race if Tehran obtained an atomic weapon.
"The UN resolution said very clearly in July, stop the enrichment or face sanctions," Livni said. "And here we are in November, and still we are talking about the next resolution for 'soft sanctions'.
"So I think it's about time to implement sanctions."
Under increasing pressure to change US policy in Iraq, Bush is awaiting conclusions of a study group that may recommend opening talks with Iran and Syria as a way of prodding them to help restore stability in neighbouring Iraq.
Bush will speak to members of the study group on the same day he is to meet Olmert. The group is expected to deliver its final report by year-end.
Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, however, has said that talks with Iran and Syria are "first and foremost an issue for Iraqis".
Bush and Olmert will likely talk about Lebanon, as well as Iran, according to a high-ranking administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
It will be the first White House meeting for Bush and Olmert since Israel's war against Hizbullah in Lebanon, in which the United States lent its unfailing political support to its ally.
Meanwhile, Washington continued to back Israel after the Jewish state's shellings on Wednesday, which killed 19 people in the Gaza Strip.
The United States also vetoed an Arab-sponsored draft resolution in the UN Security Council on Saturday that would have condemned both Israel's attack in Gaza and Palestinian rocket firing into the Jewish state.
US Ambassador John Bolton called the text "unbalanced," "biased against Israel and politically motivated," adding that it did not provide an "even-handed characterisation" of the incident.
Officially, Olmert's visit "is a working meeting to discuss the strong bilateral relationship, key regional issues and next steps to resume progress on the roadmap" to Middle East peace, said US national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
But the formation of a Palestinian government by the radical organisation Hamas in March has made the possibility of a negotiated settlement even more remote.
And matters were complicated further by the June 25 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier on the edge of the Gaza Strip by armed Palestinians, including Hamas militants.