Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington, DC, and will visit the White House on Tuesday, with the war on Iran topping the agenda.
Netanyahu’s visit is his first for talks with President Donald Trump since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran with strikes on Tehran on February ۲۸. It also comes amid increasing Israeli raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank and three months before elections in Israel.
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He has visited the White House more times under the Trump administration than under any other US president. Political analysts say Netanyahu is seeking Trump’s support for re-election.
What are the two leaders likely to discuss and what happens next in the US-Israel war on Iran?
Here’s what we know:
Why are Trump and Netanyahu meeting now?
Netanyahu is primarily in the US to attend the funeral ceremony of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who died on July ۱۱.
Graham was a close Trump ally in the Senate, both on domestic and international matters, including the war on Iran, as well as a staunch supporter of Israel. His funeral ceremony will take place on Tuesday in Washington, DC, beginning at ۲pm (۱۹:۰۰ GMT).
Before attending Graham’s memorial, Netanyahu is also expected to meet Trump at ۱۱am (۱۵:۰۰ GMT) in Washington, DC, where protesters have lined the streets in anticipation of his visit.
He is scheduled to fly back to Israel on Wednesday.
What are Trump and Netanyahu likely to discuss?
A White House official told the Reuters news agency that the two leaders were likely to discuss the war on Iran as well as Israeli strikes and occupation of Lebanon, whose president Trump hosted last week. Israel says it is targeting strongholds of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into its north shortly after the war on Iran began. However, Iran says it will not agree to a peace deal unless Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said many people in Israel believe the US should not make a deal with Iran and should instead resume the war. He said some in the US support this view.
“Now, Trump has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu and has said several times that he feels the Israeli leader is not seeing the big picture. And sometimes you’re not sure whether both men are on the same page or whether they are diametrically opposed to one another. So it will be interesting to see if we get any readout from either side after that meeting,” he said.
Fisher, however, added that the outcome of the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu is currently not expected to be made public.
The White House official also told Reuters that the two leaders would also discuss the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements between Israel and Arab and other nations which Trump began brokering during his first term as US president to normalise diplomatic relations. So far, only the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Kazakhstan have agreed to sign.
Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, DC comes amid intensifying pogroms and violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank over the weekend following a deadly shootout in the town of Tal, in which two Israelis and four Palestinians were killed.
Israeli settlers have been making a push to increase the number of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank since ۲۰۲۲, when Netanyahu formed the most far-right government in the country’s history, including ministers who are leading figures in the settler movement.
Expanding the illegal settlements would help Netanyahu garner the far right’s support in the upcoming elections, political observers say.
However, in a letter published on Tuesday, about ۶۰۰ former Israeli officials appealed to Trump, saying he is the only one capable of helping to avoid the “calamity” of escalating violence in the West Bank and its implications for Israeli, US and regional security.
“Unless arrested swiftly and decisively, escalating violence in the West Bank is poised to ignite the region and carries severe ramifications for both Israeli security and US regional interests,” the letter, written by lobby group Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stated.
“It is our professional judgment that no one but you, Mr President, can avert this calamity.”
CIS is a movement of more than ۵۵۰ retired Israeli army colonels and generals, as well as equivalent ranks in the intelligence agency Mossad, the internal security agency Shin Bet, police, the foreign service and other corps.
What do Trump and Netanyahu currently disagree on?
The two leaders once appeared politically inseparable, with Netanyahu describing Trump as the “greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House” last October. Trump returned the praise. During a ۲۰۲۵ appearance in Israel, he joked, “He’s not easy – not the easiest guy to deal with – but that’s what makes him great.”
But Israel’s hostilities with Iran have showcased a crack in Netanyahu and Trump’s alignment.
War on Iran
Last month, Trump reportedly called Netanyahu “f****** crazy” during a phone call and accused him of undermining US diplomatic efforts to end the war on Iran by continuing attacks on Lebanon, among other issues. He warned that Israel’s military escalation risked derailing peace talks with Iran.
“He will have no choice,” Trump told the Financial Times when asked about the likelihood of Netanyahu approving a possible peace agreement with Iran. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”
Political observers say the two leaders are each driven by their own political interests, which are on a collision course. In the US, the war with Iran is deeply unpopular, so Trump needs to reach a deal with Iran to end the war. Netanyahu, on the other hand, could benefit politically at home if it were to continue.
‘Regime change’ in Iran
“Regime change” in Iran appears to be a major sticking point between the two leaders.
Alex Vatanka at the Middle East Institute told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu is likely to try and “sell the idea of regime change again in Tehran” when he meets Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
“I don’t think it will go down well with President Trump because he doesn’t want to do that,” Vatanka said. “Politically, in the US, this war is hugely unpopular, so it remains to be seen what Prime Minister Netanyahu gets out of this meeting.”
He added that previous meetings between Trump and Netanyahu in Washington, DC, have often preceded a flare-up in tensions with Iran, and it remains to be seen whether this one breaks that pattern.
Vatanka said Israelis are still unhappy with the Trump administration about the memorandum of understanding agreed with Tehran, because they “have a different sense of threat perception when it comes to Iran”.
Israeli officials will want Netanyahu to continue to press Trump on Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programmes, he said.
“The Trump administration’s counter to that is there is only so much the US can do militarily unless they decide to go in and occupy Iran, and this is something nobody really takes seriously,” he added.
But in a video statement before departing for Washington, DC, Netanyahu said: “In these complex times, you need to act with both great determination and great wisdom. We will discuss all the issues on the agenda, primarily Iran.”
“Of course, our goal is to protect our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us,” he added.
Lebanon
Israel has also refused to withdraw from Lebanon, insisting that it has the right to bomb the country at any time to respond to “threats”.
According to Axios, in a phone call in early June, Trump told Netanyahu: “Everybody hates you now … everybody hates Israel because of this.”
According to an Israeli official quoted by CNN, Netanyahu told his security cabinet on Sunday that the Trump administration wants Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza but he would oppose the idea.
US-Turkiye aircraft deal
Al Jazeera’s Fisher noted that another point of friction between the two leaders is Washington’s sale of F-۳۵ aircraft to Turkiye.
“Netanyahu doesn’t want that to happen. Trump was asked about it in the last few hours, and he said we will sell to whoever he wants. So it could be a very interesting meeting at the White House on Tuesday,” Fisher said.
In July, in an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said: “I don’t think they [Turkiye] should be given F-۳۵s or the engines for their fighter jets because that’ll upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority, and also by, I think, by America’s posture in the Middle East.”
So, do Trump and Netanyahu agree on anything?
Currently, there are frictions between the two leaders’ policies towards the June ۱۷ MoU between the US and Iran that made provision for a regional ceasefire, including in Lebanon.
In February, a White House official told reporters that the Trump administration also opposes any Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu has, however, brushed off frictions with Trump and said their ties are “fine”.
In an interview with Fox News in early July, Netanyahu heaped praise on the US and Trump.
“America has been a tremendous force for good, and without America, there won’t be any democracy in the world, and there won’t be any freedom in the world,” he said.
Netanyahu said there may be some differences between the US and Israel, but the two countries are “model allies”.
“My relationship with the president is fine, and we have a way of ironing out our differences as allies who respect each other,” he said, adding that he would smooth things over.
But an Israeli official told CNN on Monday that it had taken time to schedule the meeting with Trump, and that Netanyahu got confirmation only once Graham’s funeral had been announced.
Speaking to reporters about the war on Iran on board Air Force One while travelling to Michigan on Monday, Trump said Israel “needs the US”.
“You know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel. Bibi’s coming, he’ll tell you,” he said.
“If I didn’t get involved, and I didn’t blow up those nuclear, essentially, soon-to-be nuclear weapons to dust, Israel would have been terminated months ago.”
Trump added that he and Netanyahu remain “pretty close”.
What happens next?
Amid frictions, it is unclear whether the meeting will end with Israel and the US continuing their war on Iran and Israel continuing its attacks on southern Lebanon, Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.
Therefore, it is going to be a high-stakes meeting for Netanyahu.
Sources have also told Reuters that Netanyahu would use the meeting to lobby for Trump’s support for his re-election campaign ahead of an October ۲۷ vote.
A meeting with Trump will, he hopes, showcase what has traditionally been a close relationship between the two leaders and could help Netanyahu at home, where he is struggling in opinion polls.
