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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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President Donald Trump has expressed his desire to stay on his diplomatic track with Iran following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrived in a last-minute trip to Washington in a bid to press for more stringent conditions on any deal with Tehran.
Describing "a very good meeting" with the Israeli premier over the course of three hours on Wednesday, Trump said "there was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a deal can be consummated."
"If it can, I let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference. If it cannot, we will just have to see what the outcome will be," the U.S. leader added, noting that the U.S. strikes he ordered against three Iranian nuclear facilities following the 12-Day War launched by Israel in the midst of the previous talks between Washington and Tehran last June.
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Trump has not yet publicly addressed Netanyahu's prior talk of outlining "principles" for U.S.-Iran negotiations, which the Israeli premier's office said ahead of the meeting "must include limitations on ballistic missiles and a halting of the support for the Iranian axis."
Following the meeting, the Israeli Prime Minister's Office said Netanyahu "emphasized the security needs of the State of Israel in the context of the negotiations, and the two leaders agreed on continued coordination and the close bond between them."
But an absence of U.S. guarantees may only heighten Israeli concerns that reportedly fueled Netanyahu's decision to move up the visit that was originally scheduled for next week.
"I think there is a gap between the U.S. and Israel, and this is why Prime Minister Netanyahu rushed to Washington," Yoel Guzansky, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies who previously served on Israel’s National Security Council official and as adviser to several premiers, told Newsweek. "Reportedly, he asked for the meeting because he has concerns about the U.S. position in the negotiation."
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'A Problem Israel Cannot Live With'
Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with military intervention since the nation was rocked by protests that devolved last month into the deadliest clashes in the history of the Islamic Republic. Government estimates place the death toll at about 3,117 people, including more than 500 security personnel, while foreign human rights monitors place the total figure of those killed far higher, some as high as 10 times the official number.
But since Trump declared that "help is on the way," he has also utilized an U.S. military build-up in the Middle East, including the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, to push for renewed talks regarding Iran's nuclear program. While Tehran has always maintained that its program was solely for peaceful purposes, it has ramped up uranium enrichment and other activities once restricted by the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that Trump abandoned during his first term.
Even a stronger agreement in a similar style to the JCPOA, which dealt only with restricting Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, might not be enough for Netanyahu.
"The U.S. might be willing to compromise and concentrate only on the nuclear, meaning a new JCPOA, maybe even better than the JCPOA," Guzansky said. "Trump can sell it and say, 'Oh, we got a better one,' but it will be a bad deal for Israel, because Iran is not enriching anymore, Israel has crippled Iran, together with the U.S., back in June on the nuclear issue."
"The problem is that since then, and even before then, Iran developed a strategic missile capability that Israel see as a strategic problem, not existential, but very dangerous to Israel, because these are thousands of missile ballistic missiles with big warheads, and now more than ever accurate," he added. "So, for Israel, this is a problem not as acute as the nuclear but a problem that Israel cannot live with."
The precise kind of agreement that Trump is aiming for has yet to be outlined, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio has listed a number of necessary categories that appeared to meet a number of Israel's core asks.
"I think in order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things," Rubio told reporters last week. "And that includes the range of their ballistic missiles. That includes their sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region. That includes the nuclear program, and that includes the treatment of their own people."
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A 'Greater Middle East' Strategy
Iranian officials, meanwhile, have expressed their own concern with the kind of message Netanyahu was expected to deliver to Trump, just days after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held what he referred to as a "good start" in his first round of talks with U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff last weekend in Oman.
During a news conference on the eve of the meeting Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that "one of the problems of American foreign policy in West Asia is its compliance with and adherence to Israel’s demands, which has been the main cause of insecurity and security problems in our region for the past eight decades."
"The root of turning Iran’s nuclear program into an artificial crisis was the Zionist regime, which has been repeating the proposition for about 40 years that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and instilling a kind of fear in the world," Baghaei said at the time. "This regime has repeatedly shown itself to be a destructive actor. It is America’s responsibility not to let others decide for America’s foreign policy."
The following day, hours before the White House talks, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian declared that his nation "will not yield to aggression," nor to "excessive demands," but would "move with all its might on the path of regional peace and stability, especially through dialogue with neighboring countries."
A number of regional countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey, have called for restraint amid U.S.-Iran tensions.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat who served on Iran's nuclear negotiations team in the mid-2000s and is now visiting research collaborator with Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, argued that these calls were rooted in fears that Israel may seek to push Trump toward a more hawkish position on Iran following Israel's strikes on Tehran and its Axis of Resistance allies over the course of two and a half years since the eruption of the war in Gaza.
“The power of the Israeli lobby in the United States is much greater than that of America’s Arab allies in the region," Mousavian told Newsweek. "After Israel’s attacks on Gaza, Qatar, Lebanon and Iran over the past two or three years, it has now become clear to all the countries in the region that after Iran, it will be their turn. Therefore, they are trying to restrain Israel.”
Mousavian saw such Netanyahu's approach as part of a broader vision to reshape the region in Israel's favor, though he warned that should Trump attempt to oblige this endeavor rather than press forward with diplomacy, both would lose out in the end.
“Netanyahu’s goal is to realize the 'Greater Middle East' strategy; therefore, he is seeking the complete removal of Iran from the power equations in the Middle East, similar to what happened to Syria, Iraq and Libya," Mousavian added. "However, Trump is looking for a deal that he can announce as a historic victory. If Trump chooses the option of another war with Iran, neither Netanyahu’s objective nor Trump’s objective will be achieved."
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'A Shroud of Secrecy'
Which path Trump may take remains uncertain following his latest meeting with Netanyahu—and that's by design, according to Richard Goldberg, former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council under the first Trump administration and senior counselor to the National Energy Dominance Council under the second.
"It's a fluid situation," Goldberg, now senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Newsweek. "There's obviously ongoing diplomatic discussions from the Americans. There's military buildup by the Americans in theater. The president is somebody who does not want to tip his hand one way or the other. And so, Prime Minister Netanyahu leaves with a shroud of secrecy and mystery around the visit and the discussions."
Goldberg expressed confidence, however, that Trump and Netanyahu appeared to remain deeply coordinated on their approach to the issue, highlighting U.S. and Israeli officials communicating ahead of the meeting that "there was no daylight or gaps between the United States and Israel on the big picture and strategy."
"The president says that he's going to continue negotiations to see if there's a possibility of a deal, but sort of reasserts that military action is possible if there is no deal," Goldberg said. "So, we intentionally don't know what was discussed. We intentionally don't know the outcome of the meeting. I that is to keep the Iranians off balance and preserve the president's options."
Questions also surround the specificities of what may emerge to be the most comprehensive framework ever established between Washington and Tehran, going beyond even the deeply technical wrangling that ultimately produced the JCPOA over a decade ago.
Goldberg pointed to "absence of detail" regarding mechanisms and conditions regarding the dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program, its missile arsenal, its military and economic relationships with Axis of Resistance factions as well as issues beyond the security realm, potentially including changes of leadership and the status of political prisoners.
At the same time, he acknowledged these constituted "heavy demands" for a longtime U.S. foe that has voiced its unwillingness to offer broad concessions as well as its preparedness for retaliation that could extend even beyond the Middle East.
"Therefore," Goldberg said, "there needs to be very tight planning on what are the targets, what are the objectives, how do you measure success in the military option, what role does the United States play and what role might both Israeli military and intelligence apparatuses play."
"I think the president and any commander-in-chief would want to build a decision tree and understand what comes next based on each decision, the likeliest outcomes," he added. "What are the worst possible outcomes? What are the best possible outcomes? How do you choose decisions that get you into the best possible outcomes while mitigating or minimizing the risk of poor outcomes?"
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'A Pretty Big Gap'
Thus far, neither U.S. nor Israeli officials have publicly diverged on the notion of a unified stance on Iran. Still, in the absence of any substantive disclosures of where the two leaders left off on Wednesday, some read Trump's declaration of a preferred diplomatic solution with Iran, as well as the lack of any specific agreement with Netanyahu as an indication of some friction.
"I think the biggest gap is captured in Trump's tweet today, in which he outlined his desire to do a deal," Richard Nephew, who served as former President Joe Biden's special envoy for Iran and as State Department principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy and White House National Security Council director for Iran under former President Barack Obama, told Newsweek. "Ultimately, I don't think that is acceptable to Netanyahu, at least at any imaginable terms."
Nephew acknowledged Netanyahu's likely red lines on Iran having "no offensive missile capability, no nuclear program (save Bushehr, perhaps), and no presence elsewhere in the region." And while he expressed an understanding of these objectives, he also felt "it's hard to imagine Iran accepting those terms."
"But Trump has said that a deal is his preference and—at times—has privileged nuclear issues above all else," Nephew, now senior research scholar with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University's Faculty of the School of International and Public Affairs, said. "That's a pretty big gap; the question is whether Netanyahu convinced Trump to take a hardline even if it costs him a deal."
It would not be the first time that Trump has broken with Netanyahu on regional developments.
Since taking office just over a year ago, Trump has unilaterally opened up direct talks with Hamas in order to free U.S. hostages held in Gaza, struck a bilateral ceasefire deal with Yemen's Iran-aligned Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, courted Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and pushed forward a swift ceasefire to the 12-Day War following the U.S. strikes on Iran and the Islamic Republic's retaliatory missile attack on a U.S. base in Qatar, a close U.S. partner that months later faced an Israeli strike, drawing rebuke from the White House and security guarantees for Doha.
"Netanyahu, for his part, has pushed back on Trump, including on Gaza, Iran, and Syria. The biggest breach was of course over Israel's attack on Hamas leaders in Doha," Nephew said. "All of this is to say: Trump has already sided with other regional partners on issues (like with Syria) and sidelined Israel. It's not hard to see him doing it again, if he likes what's on offer from Iran."
Update 2/11/2026, 9:11 p.m. ET: This article was updated to include additional quotes, information and images.
Update 2/19/2026, 9:57 p.m. ET: This article was updated to reflect Seyed Hossein Mousavian's current title as visiting research collaborator with Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security.
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