Tensions flared between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of their scheduled White House meeting on Wednesday. President Trump expressed frustration over leaked details of Netanyahu’s planned discussions concerning Iran, highlighting growing strains between the leaders.
When queried about reports indicating Netanyahu’s desire to discuss the fortified facility, Pickaxe Mountain, located near a key Iranian nuclear site, Trump responded using Netanyahu’s nickname, saying, “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi’s telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.”
Trump further questioned why Netanyahu had to publicly reveal these talking points, expressing his thoughts during an interview on Fox & Friends: “Why don’t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?”
According to the New York Post on Monday, a source from Jerusalem indicated that Netanyahu planned to share intelligence with Trump about enhancements at Iran’s nuclear facilities on Pickaxe Mountain, suggesting Iran’s disingenuousness about seeking a peace agreement.
Netanyahu’s office has not issued a statement in response to President Trump’s remarks.
Netanyahu hails talks, plays down strains
In a video released on social media following the meeting, however, Netanyahu described the meeting as “excellent” and “one of the best conversations” he has had with Trump.
“It was a conversation marked by full partnership, mutual support and a shared understanding of our common objective: to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons, as well as other goals,” he said.
Photos posted by Netanyahu’s office on X showed the two leaders sitting beside each other in the Oval Office with wide smiles. They were joined by vice president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
Trump met Netanyahu after first having brief closed-door talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described both meetings as “positive and productive.”
Relations with Zelenskyy have warmed as Ukraine has blunted Russian advances in their more than four-year-old war, while Netanyahu faces growing White House frustration over the lack of progress toward a broader settlement in the Iran conflict and criticism from some of Trump’s supporters who oppose deeper US involvement in the Middle East.
The Israeli and Ukrainian leaders were in Washington to attend a memorial service for US Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican who was an influential advocate for both Israel and Ukraine in the US capital.
Both the Ukraine war and the widening Middle East conflict are at critical junctures. After the collapse of a ceasefire in the Iran war, Trump says he has paused US airstrikes to give diplomacy another chance. Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has been buoyed by Ukraine’s recent successes.
Zelenskyy said after meeting Trump that it was important to step up diplomacy toward ending Russia’s war in his country.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law — have agreed to visit Ukraine for the first time as part of the effort to kick-start their mediation efforts with Russia, according to two sources familiar with the conversations.
Netanyahu seeks Trump’s support for re-election
Netanyahu has run hot and cold with Trump, who at times has had to rein in the Israeli leader from attacking targets in Lebanon to try to weaken Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
An acrimonious phone call in June in which the president called the prime minister “f—–g crazy”, first leaked to the media and later publicly confirmed by Trump himself, laid bare the strains between the two leaders.
Sources familiar with the matter said Netanyahu aimed to get Trump’s support for his re-election campaign ahead of a 27 October vote.
They were also expected to discuss the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements Trump brokered to normalise diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Trump wants to add Saudi Arabia to the accords and conditioned a civilian nuclear cooperation deal with the kingdom last week on Riyadh signing up. Saudi Arabia has so far rejected joining the accords without a path toward Palestinian statehood.
Air defence and drone deal
Zelenskyy and Trump clashed repeatedly in the early months of Trump’s second term, but relations between the two have improved as Ukraine has had greater success in the war, including with increased attacks on Russia’s oil industry.
Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post after Tuesday’s talks that he had discussed with Trump licenses for producing interceptors for the US-made Patriot air defence systems on which Kyiv relies “and other ideas that could help.”
They had also been expected to discuss cooperation on drone production after an initial agreement on unmanned aerial vehicles.