Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has by far spent more time with President Trump than with any other world leader. Netanyahu, on Wednesday, will make his seventh visit to the U.S. since Trump’s second term began a little over a year ago, on top of the visit to Israel made by Trump in October. No other leader has visited the White House during Trump’s second term more than twice. The duo will once again meet at the White House.
The Israeli leader is traveling to Washington this time in order to impose as onerous conditions as possible on Trump’s desire to sign a deal with Iran that would avert a second U.S. attack on that country in the last eight months. “I will present to the President our positions regarding the principles of the negotiations,” Netanyahu said before boarding his presidential plane this morning.
In June, Trump ordered the U.S. military to bomb several of Iran’s underground enrichment facilities in the midst of Israel’s 12-day bombing campaign. After those strikes, Trump pronounced Iran’s nuclear facilities “completely and totally obliterated.”
Yet over the past two months, Trump has ordered the deployment of what he called a “massive armada,” led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, headed to Iran. On Truth Social, Trump emphasized that the deployment of military assets to Iran is larger than what he sent to Venezuela prior to the removal of that country’s president by the U.S. military. Trump added: “Like with Venezuela, [the U.S. armada] is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”
Indeed, Trump has explicitly and repeatedly threatened Tehran with “violence” and “very steep” consequences in the event that the two countries fail to reach a long-term agreement governing Iran’s nuclear program — the same one that Trump insisted had been “obliterated” last June.
Hellbound and Down 