President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reportedly diverging on whether to continue the war against Iran.
According to a report in CNN yesterday, they “had a tense conversation” on Tuesday about how to proceed. That followed a Sunday phone call during which Trump told Bibi that he was likely to move forward with new targeted attacks on Iran early in the week. But then Trump changed his mind. Netanyahu made his disappointment known on Tuesday, telling Trump that he believed delaying the expected attacks was a mistake and that the president should continue as planned, an unnamed US official said.
Israeli sources told the network that Netanyahu and officials around him are skeptical that talks will produce an agreement — particularly given Iran’s refusal so far to surrender its enriched-uranium stockpile — and that there is a strong desire in the upper echelons of the Israeli government for renewed military action, with mounting frustration over what they call Iran’s diplomatic foot-dragging. Trump, for now, continues to push for a diplomatic agreement, telling reporters Wednesday that things with Iran are “right on the borderline” and that it is worth giving diplomacy a few more days “if it saves lives.”
