Netanyahu Seeks Urgent Trump Meeting as Iran Talks Advance and Threats Escalate

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke recently, and Trump told Netanyahu that the negotiations with Iran were moving toward a possible signing, perhaps as soon as tonight. In parallel, Netanyahu is seeking an urgent meeting with Trump because of the growing tension around the talks, according to an Israeli source cited by CNN.

The source said Netanyahu is trying to arrange the meeting after Trump returns from the G7 summit in Europe next weekend, or soon after. Netanyahu wants to present Israel’s position in the negotiations, with Jerusalem especially worried about preserving Israel’s freedom of action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Iran is pushing for an Israeli withdrawal.

Against that backdrop, Trump posted a sharp message attacking opponents of the deal. He wrote that Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, lied in saying the agreement was not better than what he called the Obama “disaster,” meaning the nuclear deal. Trump said Reed was either “a total incompetent or a crook,” described the Obama accord as a path to nuclear weapons for Iran, and called his own agreement “a wall” against Iranian nuclear arms. He ended the post by saying, “Impeach Jack Reed.”

At the same time, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, posted on X that “the zero hour is near” and that missile launchers were ready. Velayati also threatened that if the Israeli “aggression” in Lebanon does not end, the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab will squeeze “your economic arteries” to the point of “strategic suffocation.”