Through a mixture of audacity, ruthlessness, and luck, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has upended the balance of power between Israel and Iran, its most threatening regional adversary, and remade the Middle East in just 20 months. But his most important victory may prove to have been winning over President Donald J. Trump on the need to attack Tehran with the full force of the -Israeli military.
Netanyahu’s success bringing Trump on board can be traced to a series of strategic decisions, according to two Israeli officials involved in talks between the two sides. The initial step came on Feb. 4, when the Israeli Premier visited the White House for the first time since Trump returned to office. Sitting around the long table in the Cabinet Room, Netanyahu reminded Trump that Iran had plotted to assassinate him, according to one of the officials who attended the meeting. He then went through a detailed slide deck outlining how, in his view, Iran was inching closer to crossing the nuclear threshold: increasing its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and advancing its centrifuge technology. “Look, Donald,” Netanyahu said, “this has to be tackled, because they’re racing forward.” He then paused for dramatic effect and looked at Trump directly in the eye. “You can’t have a nuclear Iran on your watch.”
It seemed to make an impression. But Trump was plainly not prepared to bless a direct Israeli attack on Iran. He said he wanted to try diplomacy first. He had been elected, after all, on the promise to end wars, not start them. And he had tapped his longtime friend, the real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, to broker a deal with Tehran. “Let’s go for talks,” he told Netanyahu, according to the official who was present.
Reluctantly, Netanyahu said he would give Trump the time and space to see if an agreement was possible. Eventually, Trump’s team settled on a 60-day framework to solidify the contours of an accord. Israeli officials say that letting talks run to the deadline was crucial because when Iran blew past it, Trump became comfortable with Israel’s proposed military plans. “It proved to Trump that we have nobody to talk to,” the official tells TIME, that “it was a ruse on the part of the Iranians.”
So say the Israelis. But Trump has yet to fully explain his sharp shift in posture, from determined dealmaker to potential participant in the attack on Tehran. The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Just weeks ago, Trump acknowledged that he had warned Netanyahu against military action while diplomacy continued. Yet as talks unfolded, Netanyahu was preparing plans for a full-scale attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. He got some help along the way. On May 31, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was concealing its development of nuclear material, a violation of a 2019 agreement with the agency. The Israelis then shared intelligence with Trump that they claimed showed that Iran was intentionally delaying talks to secretly acquire the parts for a nuclear arsenal, according to the Israeli officials. “They were using these talks with Steve to advance to a point where they’d be able to say, ‘We’re there, we’re a day away,’” one official says.
Not all Americans were convinced. The U.S. intelligence agencies believed, as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress in March, that Tehran had not decided to build a bomb. But once Trump’s 60-day window had closed, the Israelis seized on the President’s frustrations. Iran was on the cusp of being able to have a nuclear weapon in a matter of months, they said. The Israelis informed the Americans that they would strike Iranian targets in the early morning. Within hours, Iran struck back, killing three civilians in central Israel. But soon Israel managed to establish supremacy over Iran’s airspace. “In two days, we’ve eliminated a third of their arsenal,” says Mascha Michelson, an IDF spokesperson.
Trump officials say ideally Israel would force Tehran to return to the negotiating table and accept a permanent end to their nuclear program. Some of Trump’s allies, including Stephen Bannon and Tucker Carlson, fear that Israel will drag the U.S. military into the conflict.
Israel’s endgame remains unknown. Netanyahu has said that his goal is not regime change but that it could happen. Even the Prime Minister’s aides aren’t sure what the final outcome will be, but they are preparing for more war. “There’s been a number of surprises that we pulled off,” says one of the officials. “There are probably some more surprises that we have up our sleeve.”
Either way, it appears Netanyahu has succeeded in winning Trump over to his view of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. When asked on June 17 about Gabbard’s testimony, Trump responded, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close.”
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