One of the most predictable things about this unpredictable president is how much he enjoys bringing world leaders into the Oval Office, a global symbol of American power. The only thing President Trump seems to enjoy more than showing off his gilded room is letting a wall of news photographers and reporters capture him as he does it.
So it was revealing that Mr. Trump kept two Tuesday audiences — one with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and the other with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — out of the public eye. It was also unusual that Mr. Trump then spent the day letting his two visitors sum up the meetings.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Zelensky both need the symbolism of an Oval Office visit to convey solidarity with Mr. Trump and bolster domestic support for their respective military campaigns. But over time, they have become symbols, too: of intractable conflicts with U.S. adversaries, and of Mr. Trump’s failed promises to end them.
“I have just finished an excellent meeting with President Trump,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement. “When I say excellent, it’s not just lip service. It was 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.”
He added: “It was one of the best conversations I’ve had with the president of the United States, our friend Donald Trump.”
In his own statement, Mr. Zelensky said that his hourlong meeting with Mr. Trump, held just before Mr. Netanyahu’s, was about restarting stalled diplomatic efforts to end a more than four-year-long war with Russia. Mr. Trump also appeared to be keeping to an earlier commitment to allow Ukraine to manufacture the Patriot air defense interceptors that Mr. Zelensky’s military needs to defend against Russian ballistic missile attacks. But those weapons systems could take months or years to manufacture, so the Ukrainian president has long pushed for more U.S. help with weapons, a request he hinted at in his statement.
“The president and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” Mr. Zelensky said. “We also spoke about diplomacy — it’s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated.”
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Zelensky are facing their own challenges domestically, and their appearances in Washington underscored just how deeply Mr. Trump’s own political fortunes had become enmeshed with theirs.
A Ukrainian strike last weekend on an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea has caused fresh concerns that the two wars are melding into a slow-boil global conflict. Russia has hit Ukraine with Iranian drones. Ukraine is now exporting its low-cost anti-drone systems to Gulf Countries. In the middle of it all is Mr. Trump, whose decision to join Mr. Netanyahu at war with Iran has left him unable to bring a patient adversary to the negotiating table.
“He clearly has worsened his party’s prospects for the midterms,” said John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “Trump does not like being bullied, but he is being bullied, and there’s only so much he can do about it.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to the United States was the seventh he had made in Mr. Trump’s second term. In one fateful February meeting, Mr. Netanyahu laid the groundwork to convince Mr. Trump that Tehran was ripe for regime change, and expressed his belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could accomplish it.
Five months later, the Iranians have endured the killing of the country’s supreme leader, and regular airstrikes by U.S. forces. The economically crucial Strait of Hormuz remains controlled by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who are in no rush to acquiesce to the president’s demands to open it.
The fighting has paused, in part because Mr. Trump’s advisers have grown increasingly concerned about the Pentagon’s already diminished stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors and other air defense munitions in the Middle East.
The war is also deeply unpopular, and Americans have signaled that they do not understand what the United States is doing in Iran. One in three Americans support the war, according to a poll released this week by Reuters/Ipsos. A CBS News/YouGov poll released this week showed that 76 percent of Americans believe the war has become much harder than the president expected. According to that poll, two-thirds of Americans believe the United States should end the war.
In an interview on Tuesday morning with “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump downplayed reports that Mr. Netanyahu would present new information about an uptick in activity at Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected Iranian nuclear site. And he betrayed some annoyance with his guest.
“I don’t need Bibi to tell me that,” Mr. Trump said. “Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.” He added, “We took out their nuclear sites, and we’ll have to take out Pickaxe if we don’t make a deal.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu slipped into the White House through a side door. In the Oval Office, he was joined by the Israeli ambassador, Yechiel Leiter, and his national security adviser, Shmuel Ben Ezra.
For his part, Mr. Zelensky, once mocked by a conservative reporter in the Oval Office for turning up at the White House in military-style fatigues, donned a black suit jacket. In the past, Mr. Trump has seemed to relish pushing Mr. Zelensky around, particularly in an Oval Office meeting early last year that went so poorly that the president told the Ukrainian leader to leave. But as the war has dragged on, Mr. Zelensky has shown resilience and momentum, and Mr. Trump likes winners.
“President Putin will be waiting to see how long that lasts,” Evelyn Farkas, the executive director of the McCain Institute, said of the Russian leader. Ms. Farkas, a former Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of defense who handled Russian policy, added: “Because President Trump isn’t known for his consistency when it comes to these kinds of negotiations.”
The White House kept news of the meetings brief: “Both meetings were positive and productive!” Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, wrote on X. Mr. Trump was focused on other matters, including traveling to the National Cathedral to deliver a memorial speech for Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died earlier this month.
“He never saw a war that he didn’t like,” the president said of the senator.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Zelensky both sat nearby, listening intently.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.
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