Netanyahu, Trump to hold first meeting since Iran conflict began

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday in their first face-to-face talks since the outbreak of the Iran war.

The meeting comes after months of reported tensions between the two leaders over the handling of the conflict, although both sides have recently sought to downplay any disagreements.

Discussions are expected to focus largely on the ongoing war, which began following joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes on Iran in late February.

While military operations have continued, the United States has indicated that it wants to create room for diplomatic negotiations aimed at resolving the crisis.

Israel has not taken part in the latest round of hostilities between the United States and Iran, which flared earlier this month after an April ceasefire collapsed.

Tuesday’s meeting will be the eighth between the leaders since Trump’s return to office last year, as well as their first in-person talks since the war began.

“This is a great privilege, but it is also a great responsibility,” Netanyahu said before departing Israel on Monday.

“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,” he added.

Relations between the two leaders reached a low point in April during negotiations on the ceasefire, 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 are 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 are 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.

– ‘No break’ in ties –

For Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the primary aim of the visit is to dispel reports of a cooling in relations between the allies.

“I think that the main issue… is to show the world, to show Iran, and also even Lebanon and others as well specifically, 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,” he added.

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 normalisation 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.

Netanyahu’s visit comes months ahead of Israel’s national elections, in which he plans to seek another term.

Recent polls show Netanyahu trailing, with public anger still lingering over his government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.

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