Netanyahu to Meet Trump Next Week as Iran Talks Set to Continue

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will discuss the US-Iran negotiations with President Donald Trump in person next week.

The leaders’ Feb. 11 meeting in Washington will follow the launch of indirect talks between Trump’s envoys and the Iranian foreign minister in Oman, which the U.S. administration said were focused on capping Tehran’s nuclear program.

Israel, with U.S. reinforcement, bombed Iranian nuclear sites during a 12-day war in June and favors further action to deny its arch-foe the means to threaten its existence.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Friday evening that a deal with Iran that only covered the nuclear issues “would be acceptable.” 

But Israel sees the current diplomacy, launched after Trump threatened Iran’s leaders over their bloody crackdown on domestic protests, as a chance for more sweeping countermeasures and even regime change.

“The prime minister believes that any negotiations should include placing limitations on the ballistic missiles and a cessation of support for the Iranian axis,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Saturday announcing the meeting.

The meeting with Trump, which appears to have been scheduled on short notice, comes even as Israeli media speculated that Netanyahu would visit Washington later this month for other events. 

The reference to an Iranian axis includes Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist faction against which Israel waged a two-year Gaza war now suspended in a ceasefire, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq.

Trump on Friday said the first round of indirect talks with Iran were “very good,” and that there will be another meeting early next week.

“Iran looks like it wants to make a deal very badly. We have to see what that deal is but I think Iran looks like they want to make a deal very badly, as they should,” Trump said.

In June, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel, which sees the long-range conventional salvos as a major threat capable of overwhelming its air defenses.

With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron.

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