TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to Washington on Tuesday to encourage President Donald Trump to expand the scope of high-stakes nuclear talks with Iran. The negotiations resumed last week against the backdrop of an American military buildup.
Israel has long called for Iran to cease all uranium enrichment, dial back its ballistic missile program and cut ties to militant groups across the region. Iran has always rejected those demands, saying it would only accept some limits on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
It’s unclear if Iran’s bloody crackdown on mass protests last month, or the movement of major U.S. military assets to the region, has made Iran’s leaders more open to compromise, or if Trump is interested in broadening the already difficult negotiations.
Netanyahu, who will be in Washington through Wednesday, has spent his decades-long political career pushing for stronger U.S. action toward Iran.
Any time I hear about Benji calling for an emergency meeting with Donald Trump, I just assume that he’s going to make a demand and remind Donald that he has all the videos, all the photos, and all the material that Epstein used to manipulate him in the past.
In this case it’s a demand for a full-scale war with Iran, but one of the few good things about Donald is his reticence to embroil the US in a protracted war that would invariably be exceedingly unpopular. Sure, the US would probably get a lot of bombs off and kill tens of thousands of Iranians, but it’s hard to imagine that they’d truly “win” a war where our opponent can completely destabilize global energy markets.
And good on Iran for telling US diplomats outright that if they bomb Iran again, then negotiations are off and it’s war.