Trump seeks Iran deal, Israel threatens military action

As the Trump administration tries to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening
to upend the talks by striking Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, according to officials briefed on the situation.

The clash over how best to ensure that Iran cannot produce a nuclear weapon has led to at least one tense phone call between President Donald Trump and Netanyahu and a flurry of meetings in recent days between top administration officials and senior Israeli officials.

Trump said on May 25 that there could be “something good” coming about his effort to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in the “next two days.”

Others familiar with the negotiations said that at best there would be a declaration of some common principles. The details under discussion remain closely held and would likely only set the stage for further negotiations, starting with whether Iran could continue to enrich uranium at any level, and how it would dilute its stockpiles of near-bomb-grade fuel or ship them out of the country.

The New York Times reported in April that Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as this month but was waved off by Trump, who wanted to keep negotiating with Tehran. Netanyahu, however, has continued to press for military action without US assistance.

Israel is not a participant in the negotiations between the United States and Iran. At the core of the tension between Netanyahu and Trump is their differing views of how best to exploit a moment of Iranian weakness.

In October, Israel destroyed key elements of Iran’s strategic air defence system, which helped to protect the country’s nuclear facilities. That would enable Israeli aircraft to approach Iran’s borders without fear of being targeted.

And Israel has crippled Hezbollah and Hamas, which have been supported by Iranian money, arms and rockets. In dealing a blow to Hezbollah in particular, Israel removed the concern of the group threatening Israeli aircraft on their way to Iran and retaliating with missile attacks on Israel after any strike.

Netanyahu has argued that Iran’s vulnerability will not last long, and that the time is right for an attack. Trump has argued that Iran’s weakness makes it a perfect moment to negotiate an end to Iran’s enrichment program, backed up by the threat of military action if talks fall apart.

Israeli officials fear Trump is now so eager for a deal of his own — one he will try to sell as stronger than the one the Obama administration struck in 2015 — that he will allow Iran to keep its uranium enrichment facilities.

Last month Netanyahu insisted that the only “good deal” would be one that dismantled “all of the infrastructure” of Iran’s vast nuclear facilities, which are buried under the desert in Natanz, deep inside a mountain at a site called Fordo, and at facilities spread around the country.

This account of the tensions between the two men is based on interviews with officials in the United States, Europe and Israel who have been involved in the diplomacy and the debate between the American and Israeli governments. They insisted on anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss delicate diplomacy.

Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, met in Rome on Friday with Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff.

The two men then travelled to Washington for a meeting Monday with John Ratcliffe, the CIA director. Dermer met with Witkoff again Tuesday, though the topic of that meeting was not immediately clear.

Asked for comment, White House officials pointed to Trump’s remarks this weekend, when he said he would “love to see no bombs dropped.”

The central divide in the negotiations between Witkoff and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, focuses on the Trump administration’s position that Iran must halt all enrichment of nuclear material on its soil. Araghchi has repeatedly rejected that restriction, repeating in a social media post Tuesday that if the Western powers insist on “‘zero enrichment’ in Iran” then “there is nothing left for us to discuss on the nuclear issue.”

In an effort to keep negotiations from collapsing, Witkoff and Oman, which is acting as a mediator, are discussing creative options. Among them is a possible regional joint venture to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors with Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Arab powers, as well as some US involvement. But where the actual enrichment would take place is undetermined.

Witkoff, participants say, has also dropped his early objections to an interim understanding that lays out principles for a final deal. But that may not satisfy Israel, or Congress’ hawks on Iran.

Over the past four years, the Iranians have not only revived and improved their nuclear facilities, they have also produced uranium enriched to 60% purity, just below what is considered “bomb grade.” It would take a few weeks to turn that into 90% enriched fuel for a bomb, and somewhere between a few months to a year to produce an actual nuclear weapon, US intelligence officials have estimated.

Ratcliffe travelled to Israel last month to discuss possible covert actions against Iran with Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence officials. The two countries have cooperated in the past on covert efforts to cripple Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, including an effort during the Bush and Obama administrations to attack the facilities with a sophisticated cyber weapon.

Throughout his decades in government, Netanyahu has long been sceptical of diplomatic overtures to Tehran. He opposed, and sought to derail, the 2015 agreement, even addressing a joint session of Congress to argue for killing it.

This time, Israeli officials have dusted off an old playbook: threatening to strike Iran, even without American help. They insist they are not bluffing, even though they have made such threats and backed away several times over nearly two decades.

Israeli officials signalled to the Trump administration shortly before Trump’s first formal foreign trip, to the Middle East this month, that they were preparing to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, according to two people briefed on the discussions. US intelligence also detected Israel’s preparations for a strike.

That led Trump to speak with Netanyahu, who did not deny that he had ordered his military and intelligence agencies to prepare for a strike and argued that he had a limited window for one.

But US military officials are sceptical about how effective an Israeli strike conducted without American support would be. In the call, Trump acknowledged Iran’s weakness but said that gave the US leverage to make a deal to end the nuclear program peacefully, officials recounted.

The Israelis are particularly suspicious of any interim deal that might keep Iran’s facilities in place for months or years while a final agreement is reached. And, initially at least, the Trump administration was also sceptical. Witkoff told his Iranian counterpart that Trump wanted a final deal in a matter of two months or so.

But that deadline is about to expire, and there is still a major gap over the issue of whether Iran will be permitted to continue to enrich uranium, which Tehran says is its right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Now, the Trump administration seems more open to some kind of interim declaration of common principles, because it could help hold off an Israeli strike.

In order to satisfy the Israelis and the Iran hawks in Congress, experts say, any interim deal would almost certainly have to require that Iran ship its near-bomb-grade fuel out of the country or “down blend” it to a far lower level. That would enable Trump to claim he had eliminated, at least temporarily, the threat that Iran could speed its way to a weapon.

One concern for American officials is that Israel could decide to strike Iran with no warning. US intelligence has estimated that Israel could prepare to mount an attack on Iran in as little as seven hours, leaving little time to pressure Netanyahu into calling it off.