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President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday focused on “big three” options for ending the war with Iran on Wednesday, coming up with new ideas — such as cutting off Iran’s trade by ground — in a “clinical” conversation, senior Israeli officials said.
“There are usually a lot more jokes. The president is usually a lot more jovial,” one Israeli official who was in the room for the discussion told reporters on Wednesday. “This was a very, very serious conversation — cerebral.”
The leaders focused on three lines of focus to end Iran’s nuclear program and push them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz: getting a good deal, tightening the economic noose around Tehran and expanding the military campaign.
Netanyahu “did not tell the president” which to choose, and no decisions were made on which path Trump would take, a separate senior Israeli official said.
“The value of what we did … is I think we added some new ideas,” the person said.
On the diplomatic track, Israel believes there is one person in the Iranian regime that is more amenable to fair negotiations with the US: Tehran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, whom the official called a “realist” despite his Islamist ideology.
“I’m not sure that the difference is the ideologues of the moderates — it’s more the realists who understand that over time, his regime will suffer from the continuation of the sanctions,” the person said.
The senior official said Americans have a “lack of understanding of the fanaticism” in the Middle East — and getting a “favorable deal” remains elusive as the radical Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps continues strikes on US forces.
“If the diplomacy is coupled with very, very strong means, very strong pressures — which I’m not sure that I’m going to itemize here — yeah, I think it could happen,” the senior official said of reaching a deal to denuclearize Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “It’s basically a contest of will and the concept of force.”
To get there, the senior official said, the US and Israel will need to ramp up the pressure on Tehran — in more ways than one.
Economic pressure may be the most effective lever — with Netanyahu and Trump discussing new ways to squeeze Tehran as its economy struggles amid sanctions and the US blockade of Iranian ports, the senior official said.
“There are ways of depriving [Iran] that have not been tried,” the person said. “There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them, and negotiating at the same time.”
One example: cutting off all land routes into and out of Iran, isolating Tehran from all global trade.
The idea is to expand the progress made with the naval blockade to the ground — which the senior official said could be done without putting boots on the ground.
“Suppose you shut up all of Iran’s land supplies. Say, you can’t bring in a truck,” the person said. “Just shut up their domestic supply lines. It’s not been tried.”
The third path would be expanding the military campaign, which Israel would be willing to join if asked — and will do so regardless should Tehran attack the Jewish state again, the senior official said.
The person declined to detail military options, but said Netanyahu brought up ways to “advance the possibility” of regime collapse in Iran.
“If we are able to do certain things, we have a chance of creating conditions where the Iranian people could take their fate in their own hands,” the person said. “Several of these conditions did not materialize … for reasons that I won’t get into.”
The person added Netanyahu does not believe the US and Israel have so far been unable to empower the Iranian people to overthrow their government “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure — or decisions that were made, so they won’t materialize.”
The senior official did not provide further details.
As for comment on the contents of the discussion and the possibility of cutting off Iranian trade routes on land, a White House official told The Post that “the Commander-in-Chief has all options at his disposal.”
All in all, the nearly 90-minute conversation was an “excellent meeting” focusing on deliverables and ways the US and Israel can continue working together — despite reports of tensions between Trump and Netanyahu.
“Those who were expected to have fire and brimstone or cracks encountered a wall of granite,” the senior official said.
“It brought us to a better understanding of how we could continue to operate together to get the results that we want to achieve.”
English (US)