Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet United States President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran war, a conflict over which the two leaders have openly disagreed.
Ties between both men have appeared strained in recent months, though they have each moved to cool tensions.
The meeting, their eighth since Trump returned to office last year and their first in-person talks since the war began, is expected to be dominated by the conflict, which started with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. Washington says it wants to give negotiations a chance.
Israel stayed out of the latest round of hostilities between the US and Iran, which flared earlier this month after an April ceasefire collapsed.
“This is a great privilege, but it is also a great responsibility,” Netanyahu said before leaving Israel on Monday. “We will discuss all the issues on the agenda, first and foremost Iran. Naturally, our goal is to safeguard our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us.”
Relations between the allies hit a low point in April during ceasefire talks with Iran, with Trump unleashing profanity-laced tirades against Netanyahu and later describing him as a “very difficult guy”. Netanyahu played down the friction as “tactical disagreements”.
The talks are also expected to cover a US-sponsored framework deal signed by Israel and Lebanon last month, as well as Gaza, where reconstruction efforts remain stalled nearly three years after the war between Israel and Hamas erupted.
Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the visit’s main aim was to dispel talk of a rift. “There’s more in agreement between the two leaders than disagreement,” he told AFP.
Source: Punch.
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