Netanyahu Meets Trump at White House Tuesday, First Since Iran War Began

Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Washington this week for his eighth meeting with Donald Trump since the president returned to office, and the first face-to-face since the Iran war began. The stakes are obvious.

According to Agence France-Presse, the war started with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. Israel has sat out the latest round of fighting, which reignited earlier this month after an April ceasefire fell apart. Washington says it still wants to give negotiations a shot.

Before leaving Israel on Monday, Netanyahu called the trip "a great privilege" and "a great responsibility." His stated agenda: Iran first, then broader regional security. "Our goal is to safeguard our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us," he said, according to AFP.

The Pickaxe Mountain Question

The Jerusalem Post, citing a New York Post report and an unnamed Israeli source, says Netanyahu plans to brief Trump on Iranian activity at a site called Pickaxe Mountain, located about 1.5 kilometers south of the Natanz nuclear facility that was hit multiple times during the war. Iran reportedly began secretly building the complex in 2020.

The claim, per the Wall Street Journal's earlier reporting, is that Iran moved centrifuges into the mountain complex shortly after agreeing to a Memorandum of Understanding with the US. If true, that would be a straightforward violation of the spirit of that agreement, and Netanyahu is expected to argue it proves Iran isn't serious about a diplomatic solution.

Trump himself has sent conflicting signals. On July 13, during an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt Show, he said, "We're going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready." Then, in a meeting last week with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, he said the US would hit the site "pretty soon" and claimed Iran was "desperate" for talks, warning Tehran had "not seen anything yet."

But at other points, Trump has said the US has no intelligence confirming any activity at the complex or that centrifuges were actually moved there. That's a contradiction. No independent verification of the centrifuge movement has been publicly confirmed by US intelligence agencies as of this meeting. What Israel says it has is intelligence; what the US says it has is uncertainty. Those aren't the same thing, and the difference matters if it's being used to justify military action.

Not Exactly Best Friends

The relationship between these two men has had rough patches. AFP reports that things bottomed out in April during ceasefire negotiations, when Trump reportedly went on profanity-laced tirades against Netanyahu. Trump later called him a "very difficult guy" in an interview.

Netanyahu has downplayed all of it as "tactical disagreements," insisting the two remain aligned on the war's ultimate goals. Leaders exaggerate unity in public all the time, and it would be naive to take either man's public framing at face value without more transparency into what's actually said behind closed doors.

Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told AFP the real point of Tuesday's meeting isn't policy at all. It's optics. "The main issue... is to show the world, to show Iran, and also even Lebanon and others as well specifically, that there is no break or any kind of major disagreement between the United States and Israel," Freeman said. He added that whatever daylight exists between the two leaders is about "means, timeline, intensity, immediate objectives," not the underlying goal.

What Else Is on the Table

Beyond Iran, AFP reports the leaders are expected to discuss implementation of a US-brokered framework deal between Israel and Lebanon signed last month, which has reportedly been difficult to execute on the ground. Gaza is also expected to come up. Nearly three years into the war there, reconstruction efforts remain stalled and the humanitarian situation is described by AFP as dire. Israel says it continues to target people its military identifies as militants.

Netanyahu also reportedly accepted a Trump invitation to join something called the "Board of Peace," according to earlier AFP reporting, though details on what that body actually does haven't been widely reported.

The open question heading into Tuesday's meeting is whether Trump commits to any concrete action on Pickaxe Mountain, or whether the site remains a point of disagreement between what Israeli intelligence claims and what US intelligence is willing to confirm. Nothing here has been settled by an independent, verifiable source. Until the US either