LONDON: Commentators from the US to Israel have speculated whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s visit this week to the White House revealed cracks in the relationship between an American president looking for an exit ramp from the Iran conflict and an Israeli prime minister hoping to cling to office by keeping it going.<\/p>\n
Contrary to US President Donald Trump\u2019s usual \u201cringmaster\u201d approach to Oval Office diplomacy, his meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday, on the five-month anniversary of the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, was held behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
Afterward, Trump had nothing specific to say about the meeting, Netanyahu\u2019s eighth with him since the start of his second term, posting on social media only that it was \u201cvery good\u201d and that \u201cmany important subjects were discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s comments were equally generic. He had had \u201can excellent meeting with President Trump \u2026 a conversation of full partnership, of mutual support, with an understanding of the shared goal to ensure that Iran will not have nuclear weapons, and also other goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back home, the Israeli media had a different take. Haaretz summed up the meeting in four words: \u201cTrump\u2019s irritation, Netanyahu\u2019s desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the lackluster response, as reported by analysts and media, should not be misconstrued as \u201cdegradation of relationship,\u201d former US intelligence officer Norman Roule told Arab News.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrime Minister Netanyahu\u2019s visits generally include a ceremonial reaffirmation of the alliance, and that was absent from this trip,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that should not be interpreted as any degradation of the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meeting, he added, \u201cwould also have provided an opportunity to discuss the challenge of Hezbollah in Lebanon and how to make further progress to resolve the long-standing Israeli-Lebanon crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US administration has made good progress on this issue, bringing Israel and Lebanon to direct talks, arranging the first withdrawals of Israeli troops from Lebanon, and assurances from Beirut that it will disarm Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US has also prevented Iran from becoming a part of the Lebanese talks, and Beirut has formally asked Iran to stay out of its affairs. All of this is positive, but the issue in this meeting was likely how to build on this progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haaretz, however, argued that the visit reflected a more strained dynamic. Trump, it said, \u201cwas not eager to see Netanyahu,\u201d and had reluctantly agreed to do so \u201conly after Netanyahu decided to attend the funeral of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graham, who died suddenly on July 11, was one of Israel\u2019s strongest advocates in Washington.<\/p>\n
The visit, in Haaretz\u2019s view, \u201cwas critical for Netanyahu for both strategic (his hope of influencing moves in Iran) and for campaign purposes (by emphasizing his personal relationship with Trump).\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of the meeting, Trump had reacted irritably to a report in the New York Post that Netanyahu was preparing to hand him an Israeli intelligence briefing on Pickaxe Mountain, an underground Iranian nuclear facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t need Bibi to tell me that,\u201d Trump told Fox News. \u201cBibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s team scrambled to make amends. An Israeli official anonymously told AP that during the meeting \u201cNetanyahu made it clear to Trump and his Cabinet that if Iran were to attack Israel, they would respond, but that beyond that, they would trust the judgment of the president regarding next steps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haaretz \u2014 no friend of Netanyahu\u2019s government \u2014 concluded that \u201cit seems that the US president has no intention of taking orders from someone who got him embroiled in a prolonged entanglement in the Gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n
A little over five hours after Netanyahu left the White House, US Central Command reported that \u201cIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces launched multiple ballistic missiles from Iran in an attempted surprise attack on US forces based in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
The target was a US base in Jordan. \u201cAll Iranian missiles were successfully intercepted,\u201d CENTCOM said, adding: \u201cUS forces remain vigilant and at a high state of readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe optics of the strikes coinciding with Netanyahu\u2019s visit are unmistakable, and they could be read as a sign of Tehran\u2019s coercive signalling,\u201d said Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow on the Middle East, North Africa and Turkiye at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Commentators from the US to Israel have speculated whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s visit this week to the White House revealed cracks in the relationship between an American president looking for an exit ramp from the Iran conflict and an Israeli prime minister hoping to cling to office by keeping it going. Contrary to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101072,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101052\/revisions\/101072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}