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Netanyahu heads to Washington
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, with Netanyahu departing for Washington on Monday, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office.
The visit is scheduled to coincide with Netanyahu’s attendance at the funeral service for Senator Lindsey Graham, after Graham died suddenly last week.
The meeting comes as the US-Israeli war with Iran has escalated following a breakdown earlier this month of a ceasefire reached as part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US and Iran.
Al Jazeera also links the timing to U.S. Central Command saying its forces completed their 13th consecutive night of strikes on Iran, while Iran retaliated daily against US assets in the region, killing three US soldiers in a strike on a base in Jordan last week.
In parallel, the conflict has stretched for five months with no end in sight, as the sources describe ongoing exchanges of strikes between the two sides since late June of last year.
Trump weighs escalation
Ynetnews says Trump held a meeting Friday with senior advisers and members of his Cabinet to decide whether to escalate strikes against Iran, while The New York Times reported the deliberations.
In remarks from the Oval Office, Trump told reporters he has not yet made a decision and said the U.S. is currently in talks with Iran while Tehran is becoming "more serious" by the day.
Ynetnews adds that The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior U.S. administration official, that Trump is questioning diplomacy and is in a “revenge mode,” and it quotes Trump lashing out at Iranian officials, calling them “scum” and “crazy.”
The same account says Trump described two paths forward—continuing the current course or escalating the campaign “at much higher levels”—and it includes Trump’s statement that “Israel would no longer exist” if he believed Iran was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon before he was elected.
It also reports that an Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran “will not surrender to pressure” and claimed: “We will continue until the goals and demands of the Iranian people are met.”
Threats, assets, and coordination
Al Jazeera reports that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on federal officials to arrest Netanyahu, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges related to war crimes committed in Gaza, while Trump posted on Truth Social that “Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
“Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House next Tuesday, the PM’s office said”
The same Al Jazeera account says the Trump administration has rejected Netanyahu’s arrest while in the US and describes the administration’s “all-of government” campaign that has included sanctioning ICC officials and groups that support its investigations.
In a separate thread, VOA Farsi reports that Netanyahu’s trip is being undertaken at Trump’s invitation and that Netanyahu will meet Trump at the White House on Tuesday, 6 Mordad, while also attending the funeral service of Lindsey Graham.
VOA Farsi further says Trump warned that if any vessel in the Strait of Hormuz is targeted, the United States will target Iran's bridges and power plants, and it frames Netanyahu as supporting continuing pressure and military action against the Iranian regime.
Meanwhile, the Al Jazeera account ties the stakes to the Gaza war continuing alongside the Iran escalation, including an analysis from UN agencies finding an estimated 1.4 million people, representing 67 percent of Gaza’s population, are still suffering “crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.”
