It is difficult to know what was achieved this week during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington.
On the matter of Iran, coordination between Israel and the United States appears to be solid. Netanyahu and President Donald Trump seem to agree broadly on Washington’s goals in its talks with Tehran: Iran must relinquish its enriched uranium, agree not to engage in any further uranium enrichment, and permit the safe return and full access of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. As the talks proceed, Washington must reinforce the threat of implementing “snapback” sanctions as soon as this fall. And Iran must know that the possibility of additional strikes by Israel or the United States will remain if Iran attempts to reconstitute its nuclear program.
Whether such positions can lead to a deal, as Trump clearly wants, is less certain: Iran is, at this point, unlikely to agree to these terms, as it will not want to appear to capitulate after Israeli and US strikes during last month’s twelve-day war, and will hope to retain a future option to resume its program. So if Washington hopes to achieve these agreements, the Trump administration will need to increase the pressure it exerts against Tehran.
But more uncertain than Trump and Netanyahu’s coordination on hostilities with Iran, is how much progress the leaders achieved in efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and the return of hostages.
In the optimistic scenario, Trump may have made clear to Netanyahu in their second, closed-press meeting at the White House, that he is determined to see the war end, that he wants all the hostages to return home — both the twenty presumed alive and the thirty believed to be deceased—and that he will not accept a resumption of the war after sixty days. (To be clear, no reports have confirmed Trump took this approach, and little has emerged from the second meeting.)
Indeed, numerous reports suggest that US officials have told Qatari negotiators to convey to Hamas that the United States will insist on any cease-fire deal immediately tee-ing up negotiations on a final end to the war, and continuing even past the sixty days until a permanent agreement is reached. Washington’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, may chair these talks himself, according to media reports.
If these reports are correct, it is possible that Trump will not insist that the cease-fire agreement make this commitment to a permanent deal explicit, in order to spare Netanyahu trouble with his hardline coalition partners at home. But that will be the US position all the same.
On the other hand, as these reports circulated during Netanyahu’s four days in Washington, other contradictory signals emerged.