Trump, Netanyahu: From Partners to Collision Course on Iran

[00:00:00]Trump and Netanyahu's partnership unravels amid escalating tensions with Iran.

[00:00:04]>> appear in lockstep about every aspect of their military assault on Iran. Now, as Trump seeks to pull himself out of this war, he and Netanyahu are set on a collision course, with Israel very much opposing an end to the fighting and very much opposed to the deal at stake.

[00:00:21]Israel is very frustrated with the terms of the deal. They don't believe that it goes far enough to address Israel's core concerns about Iran's nuclear program, its ballistic missile capabilities, and its support for proxies in the region.

[00:00:33]And in private, they're not shy to say that. In public, they haven't really made that kind of sharp commentary, likely for fear of angering Trump. The other thing that we're hearing is that Israeli officials expect this 60-day interim negotiating period to last even longer than 60 days, as much as 90 days.

[00:00:54]And that would mean that Israel's military actions against Iran would be constrained, and likely its operations in Lebanon as well. What Netanyahu wants is the ability to deliver on things that he and Trump were not able to execute during 40 days of armed conflict against Iran. He wants the government to fall, or at least create the conditions for its collapse. That has not happened. In fact, uh the government in Iran has appeared to grow stronger with control over the Strait of Hormuz. He wants the uh nuclear program to be brought to a halt, and wants the country's highly enriched uranium to be taken out of the country. He wants its ballistic missile program, uh through which it uh Iran has launched ballistic missiles at Israel throughout the war, to be ended. And he wants Iran to stop its support for proxies across the region, and chiefly Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also the Houthi group in Yemen. So, from Netanyahu's perspective, none of those things have been achieved, and for him, that's frustrating. One, because it halts the military operation before he can achieve those goals, but it also makes it really hard for him to sell the campaign to the Israeli public as a success ahead of elections in the fall that most opinion polls project he will lose.