Washington (United States) (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived Tuesday at the White House for his first in-person talks with President Donald Trump since the Iran war began, as the leaders seek to patch over public disagreements on the conflict. The meeting is expected to be dominated by the war, which began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February but has seen a recent pause in the fighting as Washington says it wants to give negotiations a chance. Israel has not taken part in the latest round of hostilities between the United States and Iran, which flared earlier this month as an April ceasefire collapsed.
The meeting is the eighth between the leaders since Trump’s return to office in early 2025 and comes ahead of key electoral tests later this year for both Netanyahu and the US president: national elections in Israel and midterm polls in the United States. “We will discuss all the issues on the agenda, first and foremost Iran. Naturally, our goal is to safeguard our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us,” Netanyahu said before departing from Israel.
Upon arriving in Washington, Netanyahu attended a private memorial dinner on Monday evening in honor of the late senator Lindsey Graham, his office said. He was also scheduled to attend the memorial service for Graham later Tuesday. Relations between Trump and Netanyahu reached a low point in April during negotiations on the ceasefire with Iran, with Trump unleashing profanity-laced tirades against his Israeli ally. Trump later described Netanyahu in an interview as a “very difficult guy.” Netanyahu downplayed the exchanges as “tactical disagreements,” saying they were aligned on the goals of the war.
On Tuesday, the leaders were expected to discuss the implementation of a US-sponsored framework deal signed by Israel and Lebanon last month, whose application on the ground has been challenging. The talks were also expected to touch on Gaza, as diplomatic efforts to kickstart the devastated Palestinian territory’s reconstruction are at a standstill. Nearly three years after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire, and Israel continues to regularly target people the military says are militants.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday that Netanyahu’s visit comes at a “critical time for the Middle East,” with Iran continuing “to choose terrorism over negotiations” and blocking the key Strait of Hormuz waterway. Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the primary aim of the visit is to dispel reports of a cooling in ties between the allies. “I think that the main issue…is to show the world, to show Iran, and also even Lebanon and others…that there is no break or any kind of major disagreement between the United States and Israel,” he told AFP. “There’s more in agreement between the two leaders than disagreement.”
For Freeman, any differences between Trump and Netanyahu concern the means — timeline, intensity, immediate objectives of operations — rather than the ends of the war. He also suggested that Trump would mainly seek to focus on his two regional priorities, namely Iran and the expansion of the Abraham Accords, rather than on Gaza, which he sees as less of a priority. The Abraham Accords are a series of US-brokered normalization agreements signed during Trump’s first term, under which Israel established formal diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for the first time, followed by Morocco.
But other observers believe that the talks could address the possible easing of Israel’s military presence in the region, such as in Lebanon, Syria, or Gaza.
© 2024 AFP
