Alex Traiman is the CEO and Jerusalem bureau chief of the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) and host of “Jerusalem Minute." A seasoned Israeli journalist, documentary filmmaker and startup consultant, he is an expert on Israeli politics and U.S.-Israel relations. A former NCAA champion fencer and Yeshiva University Sports Hall of Fame member, he made aliyah in 2004, and lives in Jerusalem with his wife and five children.
(JNS) On the face of it, it may appear that the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t go as well as the latter may have hoped.
Netanyahu was not greeted at the West Wing entrance by Trump in front of waiting cameras, as he had been before. There were no pre-meeting or post-meeting press opportunities. Typically, such pressers are loaded with big grins and mutual platitudes, in addition to substance.
And it’s hard to know whether the three-hour meeting, which went much longer than planned, was filled with consensus. Yet with these two leaders, public appearances may be intentional projections designed to camouflage future intentions.
While no details were released as to what took place, there was much on the table to discuss. Netanyahu reportedly shared Israeli intelligence regarding Iranian nuclear development, ballistic-missile production and the massacre of Iranian protesters-all designed to demonstrate that Iran is violating each and every one of America and Israel’s collective red lines.
Focusing on the nuclear program
Yet Trump continues to insist on negotiating with the Islamic Republic and centering negotiations on its nuclear program. In a post on Truth Social immediately following his meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday, Trump wrote: “There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a deal can be consummated. If it can, I let the prime minister know that will be a preference."
From one point of view, it is difficult to understand why Trump would enter any negotiations at this point, barely six months after Jerusalem and Washington used 12 days of penetrating air power to destroy Iran’s known nuclear facilities.
Just six weeks ago, during the last Trump-Netanyahu meeting in Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that the United States would act quickly with military force if it could be proven that Tehran was attempting to restart its nuclear program.
Furthermore, Trump announced weeks ago to protesters being mowed down in the streets in the tens of thousands by the Islamic regime’s brutal forces that “help is on the way." Many assumed that help would come in the form of forthcoming military intervention.
The president has since paused referring to Iranian citizens, and instead has been focusing his comments squarely on Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles, insisting that a negotiated settlement is his preferred course of action.
The art of a nuclear deal
Trump, a master negotiator and author of the best-seller, The Art of the Deal, is well aware of what a good deal or a bad deal looks like.
In May 2018, during his first administration, he withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal-officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that former President Barack Obama signed in 2015. Trump recently called that one of the “worst deals" ever brokered.
Trump is intrinsically aware that Iran’s goal in negotiating is to stall and try to strengthen its dramatically weakened strategic and even military position. Still, any deal the present regime enters would not be worth the paper it’s printed on.
Iran is a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That didn’t prevent it from developing a sophisticated illicit nuclear-weapons program.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Netanyahu appear to be on the same page about what successful negotiations in 2026 must guarantee: no nuclear enrichment or weaponization; strict limits on ballistic missiles; no funding of foreign terror proxies in the Middle East or beyond; and no mass murder of Iranian protesters.
Maximum leverage
Trump is banking that by applying maximum leverage on the Islamic Republic, he can extract maximum concessions. Trump has mobilized a “massive armada" that sits as a sword of Damocles over Iran’s head. And he has demonstrated that under his leadership, the United States is no paper tiger and not afraid to strike in Iran at nuclear facilities or senior leaders.
Back in January 2020, Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Baghdad. The strike reportedly shook Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the core. Less than a year ago, Trump pleaded with Iran, without success, to negotiate its nuclear program.
In his post on Truth Social immediately following his meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday, Trump wrote: “Last time Iran decided that they were better off not making a deal, and they were hit with ‘Midnight Hammer.’ That did not work well for them. Hopefully, this time they will be more reasonable and responsible."
Trump’s Achilles’ heel
Yet by entering any deal, Iran’s goal will be to buy time to live another day, wait out the Trump presidency, and ultimately, take advantage of the West after a new president is in office.
From Israel’s perspective, this is the major Achilles’ heel of the U.S. president’s Middle East policy.
Acting benevolently toward malign actors, such as Syria’s Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, may yield short-term benefits and relative calm for Washington. Trump should genuinely be trusted when he tells Netanyahu that he will personally intervene if Erdoğan threatens Israel’s security.
The problem is that, unlike Middle Eastern dictators, many of whom reign for decades, Trump has barely three years remaining in office.
There is a strong chance that any future president, like so many of Trump’s predecessors, will be significantly more likely to be taken advantage of by despots. This is particularly true if the next president is a left-wing progressive or a right-wing isolationist.
Further, if the political pendulum swings in the next presidential election, there are no guarantees that a future president would not outright cancel any deal that Trump reaches, just as Trump withdrew from Obama’s JCPOA.
The ultimate deal: Exile of Khamenei
Trump may now be trying to broker the ultimate deal, including guarantees that Iran would meet America’s requirements to cease any nuclear enrichment, the proliferation of ballistic missiles and state sponsorship of terror proxies.
In reality, the only negotiated outcome that could be trusted to achieve these results would be the exile of Khamenei, the mullahs and other upper echelons of his regime.
When longtime Syrian President Bashar Assad lost control of his military forces and his country, he chose to live in exile rather than be killed and fled to Moscow. Trump reportedly offered Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro an exile off-ramp to Turkey that he refused before he was arrested on Jan. 3 by U.S. forces.
For Khamenei to accept exile, he would need to recognize that his rule would soon end by force if he refused to go. Yet that strategy assumes that at the end of the day, the 86-year-old theocrat is a rational actor.
Khamenei is neither a president nor a king. He is an ayatollah, guided by a fundamentalist and messianic ideology, who has demonstrated his willingness to wreak havoc across the Middle East. Accordingly, one must gauge that he may strike with every weapon at his disposal toward every viable target, even if his capabilities pale in comparison to the military capabilities of America or Israel.
Striking Iran would likely set off a series of retaliations across the region, potentially jump-starting a larger war. And that could pull the United States into it, too. Under the “Declarations of War Act," an extended military campaign could require congressional approval, a process Trump would prefer to avoid. By contrast, congressional approval is not necessarily required for isolated, targeted operations like “Midnight Hammer" to bomb the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear complexes, or “Operation Absolute Resolve" to remove Maduro.
‘Up to the Iranian people’
It has been reported that Trump would prefer not to be associated with assassinating Khamenei, even though Iran allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump.
Speaking to reporters this week, Vance stated, “If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, that’s up to the Iranian people."
Coming off a successful special forces operation to remove Maduro from Venezuela barely one month ago, and with Cuba now teetering on the brink of collapse, Trump would prefer that any regime change in Iran occur without American military intervention.
The president does not want to cement a reputation of foisting regime changes by force around the world, as bad and as anti-American as these regimes may be. Instead, he seeks to use his own skills to out-negotiate a people known for their own prowess at the negotiation table.
In 2020, Trump posted on X that “Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!"
Vance said this week that “the president has told his entire senior team that we should be trying to cut a deal that ensures the Iranians don’t have a nuclear weapon. But if we can’t cut that deal, then there’s another option on the table. The president is going to continue to preserve his options."
Netanyahu’s longtime strategy
The Israeli prime minister himself is a master strategist who has managed a seven-front war, alongside diplomatic and domestic challenges, with wisdom, temerity and resolve. In the past year, he has outflanked his adversary Khamenei and worked exceptionally well with Trump, his friend and ally. As a result, Iran’s entire terror proxy network has been weakened; its ballistic-missile stockpile and launching capabilities have been reduced to less than half of their original strength; and its nuclear program is in a shambles.
Before last June and Israel’s 12-day war, Trump used the threat of Israeli military action as his leverage in failed attempts to negotiate the end to Iran’s nuclear program. He was only to hold Israel off for so long before Netanyahu ordered the Israel Air Force to take matters into their own hands and strike at Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure.
Once again, Netanyahu reportedly seeks to maintain the freedom of Israeli operations against Iran, regardless of whether Trump signs any negotiated deal. An American document need not bind Israel.
So while on the outset, it may appear that he did not achieve what he had hoped-to immediately convince Trump that negotiations with Iran are doomed to fail-the likelihood that Trump will enter a bad deal remains slim.
With this meeting, Trump is fully aware of Israel’s position. He is also fully aware of what a Middle East without fundamentalist ayatollahs will mean for the entire region and the world.
Similarly, as they did just before the 12-day war last June, Trump and Netanyahu may have agreed on a set timetable for negotiations, after which a military option can be initiated. Iran is likely now on the clock to make a deal.
No one knows right now if Trump’s statements represent the actual outcome of the meeting. It wouldn’t be the first time that Trump and Netanyahu have used misdirection to foil Khamenei. It was obviously strategic that the two leaders opted not to speak to the press during or after their conversation.
Yet even if this meeting did not set the terms and target for a joint U.S.-Israel war with Iran, it remains almost certain that the next one will.