Trump and Netanyahu to meet as new Middle East tests loom

Mint

15 hours ago

When President Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, the Middle East will look far different from how it did only months ago. A region that was awash in conflict and risk seems to be ripe for diplomacy.
At first glance, it appears to be a rare opportunity for Trump's brand of dealmaking.
Israel and Hamas have resumed indirect talks on a cease-fire in Gaza after months of heavy Israeli military action. Iran, battered by the U.S. and Israeli strikes, is sending signals that it might be willing to resume nuclear negotiations, albeit on its own terms. And the White House is reaching out to Syria's new government, hoping for improved ties between Damascus and Israel.
Trump and Netanyahu's White House meeting is partly aimed at claiming credit for these shifts and partly to discuss next moves. But the durability and scope of the diplomacy remains in question.
Trump's efforts to claim the mantle of a 'president of peace," as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called him, are likely to be tested by lingering differences with Netanyahu, the question of Palestinian statehood, a wounded Iran and the president's improvisational style.
A two-month fighting pause in Gaza is critical for Trump and Netanyahu to have any hope of making eventual progress toward a prize they both seek: the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. An even more ambitious goal of Trump's is to ease decades of animosity between the U.S. and Iran.
'On ending the war in Gaza, building on the strikes against Iran and expanding normalization, Trump and Netanyahu face a real moment of possibility," said Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Pentagon official who is now at the Atlantic Council. 'Hopefully, they will seize it."
But he added: 'If the Gaza war drags on after a 60-day pause, if Iran hides its highly enriched uranium and threatens to enrich it further, or if Netanyahu's political calculations stymie key decisions, the moment could pass with little to show for it."
Of all the issues on their agenda, a Gaza cease-fire is the most achievable outcome. Netanyahu has repeatedly balked at calls for a permanent end to the conflict without an end to Hamas's role, but Israeli officials and Hamas's leaders have resumed indirect talks in Qatar on a possible deal.
Israel's top general, Eyal Zamir, told the government that he prefers moving toward a hostage deal as further operations will threaten the lives of hostages while the benefit of further weakening Hamas is unclear, according to a person familiar with the matter.
As he boarded the plane to Washington on Sunday, Netanyahu said he wouldn't relinquish his goal of seeing Hamas removed from power and disarmed even as spoke about the promise of expanding Israel's relations with Muslim-majority countries and his commitment to freeing Israeli hostages.
If Netanyahu's coalition survives until the end of the month, he will likely have at least six more months guaranteed as prime minister. Israel's parliament goes on recess July 27 and won't restart until Oct. 19. Even if his coalition falls apart after the recess, there will be at least three months before any election.
Resetting the region, former officials and analysts say, would require a sustained end to the fighting in Gaza that extends well beyond a 60-day respite, an objective that would require additional concessions by Hamas, new Israeli flexibility and support from Arab states in the region.
Even a permanent end to the fighting in Gaza is unlikely to be sufficient to revive prospects for Israeli-Saudi diplomatic breakthrough. Saudi Arabia for years has said Israel must agree on a path toward Palestinian statehood before normalization with Israel would be possible. The Saudis will find it even harder to soften that demand after the ill-will toward Israel that the Gaza conflict has engendered in Arab countries, Israeli and Arab analysts say.
Yet a large majority of Israelis now oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, arguing it would be a reward for Hamas's attacks and would threaten Israel's security in the future.
Persuading Iran to abandon its plans to enrich uranium also promises to be another uphill struggle. Arab officials are hoping U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will meet soon on a deal that would offer Tehran a lifting of sanctions in return for nuclear restrictions aimed at closing its option to produce a weapon.
Such a meeting has yet to be announced, and there has been no indication that Iranian officials are ready to give up enriching uranium and instead rely exclusively on foreign fuel supplies for the country's civil nuclear program, as Witkoff has demanded. The Pentagon said Wednesday that the U.S. military strike had set back Iran's nuclear program by one to two years.
During his May trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump declared that the U.S. would avoid military intervention and nation-building efforts in the Mideast, and pursue his 'dream" that Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords, the 2020 set of agreements that normalized relations between Israel and Muslim-majority countries including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
In confining U.S. strikes to a one-and-done attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure while eschewing regime change, Trump has largely hewed to that goal.
Though it was Israel that began the strikes on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, Trump's decision to use B-2 bombers and submarine-launched cruise missiles against Iran's most fortified sites has given him additional sway with Netanyahu. But now he faces the question of how to use it.
Netanyahu has emphasized that the war in Iran has created diplomatic opportunities for Israel. His statements indicate he thinks he might be able to pursue the war in Gaza and seek normalization with Saudi Arabia at the same time, an assessment at odds with most U.S. analysts.
'The question is can Israel start moving toward normalization without ending the war," said Amir Avivi, a former defense official close with the current Israeli government and security establishment.
The impetus behind Trump's seemingly disparate moves, one former U.S. official said, is his determination to be known as the president who finally stabilized the Middle East. But the diplomatic openings he is now seeking to exploit depend on bringing along Netanyahu, along with Hamas and Iran.
Some of Trump's initial ideas since returning to the White House have appeared improvisational and didn't get far. His February proposal that Gazans depart the strip so it might be rebuilt was a nonstarter for the strip's residents and Arab states.
Other elements of his strategy lack specificity. Any longer-term solution for Gaza, many analysts say, would need to provide for some form of Palestinian governance that is an alternative to Hamas and an Arab security force, as well as reconstruction plans, most of which Trump administration officials have yet to spell out in any detail.
'Trump wants to be seen as a peacemaker but also someone who knows how to use leverage to promote deals," said Dennis Ross, who served as a senior official on Middle East issues in Republican and Democrat administrations. But he added, 'There is not an integrated strategy but Trump is taking advantage of what Israel has done militarily."
Write to Michael R. Gordon at [e-mail] and Dov Lieber at [e-mail]