President Trump’s negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, participated in a second round of indirect negotiations in Geneva on Tuesday. The talks, which took place in the home of the Omani ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva and are being mediated by Omani officials, are part of an effort to reach a new agreement between the U.S. and Iran that would eliminate the threat to peace from Iran’s nuclear program and potentially other serious concerns raised by the United States and Israel. These include Iran’s large arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles, Iran’s support for terrorist groups across the Middle East, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and the violent suppression by the Islamic regime of street protests across Iran, resulting in the death and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Iranian citizens.

While the American negotiators did not make any public comments after the three-hour meeting in Geneva was completed, Iranian Foreign Minister Aragchi said, “The atmosphere in this round of negotiations was more constructive. Good progress had been made in comparison with the first meeting. Both sides have positions that will take some time to get closer to each other. The path to an agreement has been started, but that does not mean we can reach an agreement quickly.”

He also told Iranian state television that, “Ultimately, we were able to reach broad agreement on a set of guiding principles, based on which we will move forward and begin working on the text of a potential agreement. It was agreed that both sides would work further on draft texts for a potential agreement, after which the drafts would be exchanged, and a date for a third round [of negotiations] would be set.”

Ayatollah Khamenei Responds in Kind to Trump’s Threats

Aragchi insisted that President Trump must stop threatening the use of military force against Iran should the negotiations fail to reach a final agreement. After Trump told reporters on Air Force One that “I don’t think they [Iran] want the consequences of not making a deal,” and earlier said in answer to a reporter’s question that he thinks that regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen.” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded Tuesday with threats of his own.

“In one of his recent speeches, the U.S. president said that for 47 years, America has not succeeded in destroying the Islamic Republic… I tell you: You will not succeed either,” the ayatollah said.

“We constantly hear that [the U.S.] has sent a warship toward Iran [referring to the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier U.S.S Abraham Lincoln]. A warship is certainly a dangerous weapon, but even more dangerous is the [Iranian] weapon capable of sinking it,” Khamenei declared.

President Trump has continued to warn that only reaching a quick agreement between the U.S. and Iran on these issues would prevent another round of attacks on Iran by the huge armada of U.S. warships and military aircraft, which Trump has sent to the region, as well as independent attacks on Iran by the Israeli air force and security agencies.

Trump also said that he would be involved “indirectly” in the negotiations, and that he still thinks that Iran wants to make a deal to avoid another American attack like the one in June when American B-2 bombers devastated 3 major Iranian nuclear sites.

Following Tuesday’s meeting in Geneva, Reuters reported that a senior Iranian official asked for further assurances that the U.S. is serious about lifting its crippling economic sanctions on Iran. During his first term as president, in 2018, Trump walked away from the nuclear deal that the Obama administration reached with Iran in 2015, and reimposed the sanctions on Iran’s economy that had been lifted by Obama’s deal. Reuters also reported that the U.S. military is preparing for the possibility that it will need to conduct an extended series of attacks against Iran if the current talks fail, in contrast to last June, when only one American air strike using B-2 stealth bombers dropping huge bunker busting bombs on 3 of Iran’s nuclear facilities was sufficient to force it to ask President Trump for a ceasefire.

Trump and Netanyahu Agreed to Increase the Pressure on Iran

During the most recent meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump at the White House on Wednesday, February 11, they reportedly agreed that the U.S. will further increase its “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran’s economy.

However, President Trump insisted that the indirect U.S. negotiations with Iran must continue to their ultimate conclusion before he would order the use of the overwhelming U.S. military force that has been gathered in the region to compel Iran to agree to America’s demands.

These include placing much more effective controls on Iran’s nuclear program than in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump rejected in 2018, the imposition of strict limitations on the range and quantity of Iran’s ballistic missiles, the termination of Iran’s support for Islamic terrorist organizations and rogue regimes, and last, but not least, halting the slaughter and mass arrests of Iranian citizens protesting against the failures of the Islamic regime.

The current series of U.S.-Iran talks began on Friday, February 6, with a preliminary meeting between Trump’s negotiators, Witkoff and Kushner, and foreign minister Araghchi. At Iran’s request, the site of the first talks was moved from Istanbul, Turkey, to Oman’s capital city of Muscat. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, served as the mediator for that meeting, conveying messages between the two sides.

Both sides expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the first meeting, which established the ground rules for the talks. However, the U.S. negotiators rejected Iran’s attempt to limit the substance of the talks to a renegotiation of the inadequate and deeply flawed terms of the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran reached with the Obama administration. Instead, the American negotiators insisted that the other U.S. demands regarding Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for terrorism, and its attacks on Iranian demonstrators must also be addressed, as Iran had agreed to do when it first requested the negotiations.

Iran is also demanding an end to the crippling U.S. and international sanctions that have ruined Iran’s economy and helped to ignite the mass public protests that rapidly spread across Iran last month and were then ruthlessly suppressed by the thugs of the Islamic regime.

Trump Promised Iran’s Protesters That “Help Is on the Way”

In response to reports that many thousands of the Iranian citizens demonstrating in the streets were being murdered by the paramilitary Basij militia operated by the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), on January 13, President Trump publicly promised the beleaguered protesters that “help is on the way.” Trump then ordered a rapid U.S. military buildup in the region, including two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and their escorting warships, and threatened to launch another attack, even more devastating than the one that destroyed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities last June, if the Islamic regime did not agree to his demands.

Shortly after the White House announced that Trump agreed to Iran’s request to start talks on a deal to prevent a U.S. attack, Prime Minister Netanyahu asked that his previously scheduled February 18 visit to the White House be moved up by a week so that he could personally warn Trump about the dangers of trying to negotiate any kind of agreement with Iran before the talks had progressed too far.

According to two White House sources quoted by Barak Ravid in an Axios news report, Netanyahu and Trump were already in agreement that Iran must be denied the capability to obtain nuclear weapons. However, when Netanyahu told Trump that it is impossible to make a good deal with Iran because history proves that Iran can’t be trusted to abide by any deal that it might sign, Trump rejected the warning and replied, “We’ll see if it’s possible. Let’s give it a shot.”

Putting the Squeeze on Iran’s Biggest Oil Customer

Ravad’s White House sources said that Trump’s plans to increase the pressure on Iran’s economy involve enforcing the existing export sanctions on the 80% of Iran’s oil that it currently sells to China by threatening to raise tariffs on all of China’s exports to the U.S. if its oil purchases from Iran continue. The income from those sales currently provides Iran with much of its foreign income. If China responds to the tariff threat by curtailing its oil purchases from Iran, it would put Iran’s already failing economy into even more dire straits.

Netanyahu’s warning to Trump that the Iranians cannot be trusted was confirmed last week by another Israel Hayom story by Danny Zakem, which revealed that Iran has already deceived Trump and the United States at least twice since the crisis began. The first deception was the assurances that Trump received from Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi that the mass execution of Iranian protesters had been stopped, which was the reason that President Trump gave for not launching an immediate attack on Iran in order to protect the protesters. On January 14, Trump announced that in response to his public promise that “help” was on the way for the protesters, “We were told that the killing in Iran has stopped and there is no plan for executions, or for an execution, or for executions — that’s what I was told based on reliable authority.”

Iran Is Still Executing Protesters but Doing It in Secret

However, Israel Hayom reports that “according to intelligence information that reached several intelligence agencies in the West, including the Mossad and the British and German agencies, the executions continued, but efforts were made to conceal them. Instead of hanging protesters who were caught in city squares, they were shot or strangled in custody, and their families were told they died in the protests, even though there is evidence they were arrested alive.” The Israel Hayom story also said that reports are still being received in the West claiming that the protests and demonstrations breaking out in Iran’s rural cities are still being suppressed by the Tehran regime, and that the mass arrests of suspected protesters across the country are ongoing.

The Jerusalem Post published a report last week from an unnamed Iranian doctor claiming that agents of the Islamic regime have been entering Iranian hospitals to murder wounded protesters and to arrest the medical personnel who have been treating them. According to Dr. “R,” whose name was withheld in the report for security reasons, “many [hospital] patients were found dead on their treatment beds, still attached to [medical] machines, with bullet holes in their heads.”

Israel Hayom has also reported that the original message to the U.S. from Iran’s Islamic regime, which was conveyed through Turkey and claimed that Iran was prepared “for [a] comprehensive discussion of all disputes,” was deliberately deceiving. According to diplomatic sources, when the Americans then demanded further details on the offer, “Iran confirmed it would agree to discuss not only the nuclear issue, but also long-range missiles and the support and maintenance of [the] terror organizations dependent on it, [including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad].”

According to the Israel Hayom report, when the United States first agreed to Turkey’s request to open negotiations with Iran, the Islamic regime then demanded the withdrawal of the military forces that the U.S. had recently deployed in the region. That demand only infuriated Trump and prompted him to dispatch even more American naval and air reinforcements to the region.

Iran’s Bait-and-Switch Negotiating Tactics

Finally, when American negotiators Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Oman for the first meeting, they were informed that Iran’s foreign minister Araghchi had only been authorized by his government to discuss the nuclear issue, and even there, Iran’s position had significantly hardened since its initial request for negotiations. When the American negotiators then threatened to break off the talks, Aragchi promised that he would come to this week’s meeting in Geneva with a broader mandate for discussions. But the Americans then insisted that the negotiations would only continue if Iran agreed to discuss all of the issues that they had raised, including Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for terrorism, and its violent suppression of protesters.

When Trump was asked at a press conference shortly after he met with Netanyahu on February 11 whether the arguments presented by the Israeli prime minister had changed his mind about the negotiations with Iran, the president said, “Iran must reach a deal; otherwise, it will be very traumatic for them [and] I don’t want that to happen.”

When a reporter asked Trump whether Netanyahu had asked him to cancel the talks with Iran, the president replied, “He didn’t say that,” and that the subject was not discussed. Trump then added that “I’ll [talk] to them [Iran] as long as like.”

Trump Is Looking for a Quick Deal With Iran, With No Delays

Trump also predicted that, “There will probably be a deal [sometime] within the next month. It shouldn’t take a long time,” and then warned ominously that, “They [Iran] need to agree very quickly.”

With regard to the American demands in the negotiations, Trump said that Iran must agree to totally give up the enrichment of uranium and show that they are willing to place the necessary restrictions on their nuclear program.

When a reporter then asked Trump whether he thought that Netanyahu, as the prime minister of Israel, was responsible for the failure to anticipate Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack, Trump responded that all of Israel’s leaders bore that responsibility.

Trump then changed the subject by criticizing Israel’s President Yitzchok Herzog for rejecting Trump’s request that he issue a presidential pardon to Netanyahu. The prime minister has been on trial in Israel since May 2000 on three politically controversial charges of corruption. But Trump has publicly praised Netanyahu as an Israeli war hero, and said that Herzog “should be ashamed of himself,” and called him “disgraceful [for] not giving it [the pardon].”

One of the White House sources told Axios reporter Ravad that, “We are sober and realistic about [trusting] the Iranians. The ball is in their court. If it is not a real deal, we will not take it,” while the second official told Ravad, more pessimistically, that he thinks there is “zero chance” that Iran will agree to anything the U.S. proposes or vice versa.

Ravad also reported that the next session of talks between the U.S. and Iranian negotiators, moderated by the Omani foreign minister, would be held in Geneva this week on Tuesday.

When Trump was asked about Ravad’s report on the next negotiating meeting, he told Axios, “Either we will make a deal [with Iran], or we will have to do something very tough like last time [referring to the B-2 stealth bomber attack on Iran last June].”

U.S. Distributing Starlink Internet Terminals to Iranian Protesters

When the president was asked if he supports regime change in Iran, Trump replied, “It seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” and, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the Trump administration has started smuggling roughly 6,000 portable Starlink internet terminals into Iran to give civilians seeking regime change unfettered access to each other and international communications. The Starlink systems will keep working even if Iran’s Islamic regime decides to cut off public access to land-based internet and telephone lines when the next anti-regime street protests break out, as it did during the January demonstrations.

The covert distribution of the Starlink equipment to anti-regime protesters in Iran began after a conversation last month between Elon Musk, the owner of Starlink, and President Trump. The Starlink system is impervious to most jamming techniques because it depends on the transmission of multi-gigahertz frequency radio signals to and from its own network of low-orbit Earth satellites. While Starlink does not offer telephone service directly to its subscribers, they can use its internet signal to access WiFi calling on most smartphones or popular phone-enabled applications such as WhatsApp or Skype.

While the private ownership of a Starlink satellite terminal is illegal in Iran, it is believed that tens of thousands of Iranian citizens already own the systems in order to maintain contact with each other and to share information with other like-minded people around the world, outside the control of government-operated internet firewalls or censors.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Advocating for Iran

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who helped to set up the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, told Britain’s Financial Times that both sides are showing encouraging initial signs of flexibility regarding a new agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

Fidan said he believes that the government in Tehran “genuinely wants to reach a real agreement” and will agree to reasonable limits on its uranium enrichment activities. As a result, he said, “right now, at least, there does not appear to be an immediate threat of war.”

Publicly, Iran demands international recognition of its right to continue enriching uranium to 3.67% purity, for use as fuel in civilian nuclear reactors, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran also rejects demands for the removal of its illicit stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium.

However, Fidan said that, at least initially, Iran would be prepared to discuss two issues, the extent of uranium enrichment it will be permitted to continue, and what is to be done with its more than 900 pounds of 60% enriched uranium, which, when further enriched to 90% purity, could be used to build up to 10 nuclear weapons.

The Turkish foreign minister also warned that if the United States continues with its “all of nothing” approach, and insists on expanding the scope of the talks to Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for terrorism, and its treatment of Iranian protesters, it “will bring nothing but another war.”

The New York Times has also reported that Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, recently proposed during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to transfer Iran’s stockpile of 60% uranium to Russia for safekeeping.

In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said that Iran is prepared to discuss new limitations on its nuclear program, but only if the U.S. is ready to lift all of the sanctions on its economy and not try to raise other issues, such as its ballistic missiles. “The ball is in America’s court to prove that they want to do a deal.” Takht-Ravanchi said, ‘[And] sanctions have to also be on the table.”

He added that the first round of talks in Oman went “more or less in a positive direction, but it is too early to judge,” and added that with respect to the fate of Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, “it was too early to say what will happen in the course of negotiations.”

Iran Demanding the Right to Enrich Uranium and Keep Its Missiles

The Iranian diplomat also cited a recent statement made by the chief of Iran’s nuclear program last week that Iran might be willing to dilute the highly enriched uranium, reducing its concentration to 3.67% concentrated permitted by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in return for all of the sanctions on its economy being lifted, but insisted that Iran must be permitted to continue enriching uranium at the lower level. The “issue of zero enrichment is not an issue anymore, and as far as Iran is concerned, it is not on the table anymore,” he declared.

He also said that Iran needed to keep its ballistic missile arsenal for self-defense against another attack like the one last June and recalled that, “When we were attacked by Israelis and Americans, our missiles came to our rescue, so how can we accept depriving ourselves of our defensive capabilities?”

The Iranian diplomat also complained that his country is hearing mixed messages from President Trump about his intentions. On the one hand, he said, “We are hearing that they are interested in negotiations. They have said it publicly; they have said it in private conversations through [the mediator in] Oman that they are interested in having these matters resolved peacefully.”

However, on the other hand, the deputy foreign minister also cited Trump’s answer to a reporter’s question in which he welcomed the possibility of regime change in Iran as “the best thing that could happen,” and warned that, “If we feel this is an existential threat, we will respond accordingly. It is not wise to even think about such a very dangerous scenario because the whole region will be in a mess.”

Takht-Ravanchi concluded by noting that, “We see an almost unanimous agreement in the region against war. We are hopeful we can do this through diplomacy, although we can’t be 100 percent sure. We will do our best, but the other side also has to prove that they are also sincere.”

Meanwhile, the nuclear weapons proliferation experts at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security report that, according to satellite surveillance imaging, over the past month, Iran has been trying to rebuild and fortify against attack the nuclear sites in Natanz and Isfahan that were destroyed last June by U.S. B-2 bombers and Israeli warplanes.

Netanyahu Reveals What He Told Trump About Iran

During a speech he delivered Sunday in Yerushalayim to a group of visiting Presidents Conference leaders, Prime Minister Netanyahu revealed that he told Trump last week what must be included in any deal with Iran that would be sufficient to avoid the need for another attack from the U.S. and Israel:

“I said that if a deal is to be reached, it should have several components that we believe are important not only for the security of Israel, but [also] for the security of the United States, the region, [and] the world,” Netanyahu told the visiting American Jewish organizational heads.

“The first is that all enriched material [uranium] has to leave Iran.

“The second is that there shall be no [Iranian] enrichment capability; not just stopping the enrichment process, but [also] dismantling the equipment and the infrastructure that allow enrichment in the first place.”

“The third is to address the question of ballistic missiles. There’s an MTCR [Missile Technology Control Regime international agreement with a] limitation [on maximum range for missiles] of 300 kilometers [about 200 miles], and Iran is supposed to adhere to it. Of course, it doesn’t, as the Rising Lion Operation [last June’s 12-day U.S.-Israeli war against Iran] itself demonstrates, [and] as everybody knows.”

“And the fourth is to dismantle the axis of terror that Iran has built. It’s been smashed, but it’s still there; it’s trying to recover, as Iran itself is trying to do.”

“And the last thing,” Netanyahu said, “is remember Ronald Reagan’s dictum vis-a-vis the Soviet Union? Trust but verify. Distrust, distrust, and always verify. So there have to be real inspections, substantive inspections, no lead-time inspections, but effective inspections for all of the above.”

When the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, addressed the same President’s Conference audience in Yerushalayim, he expressed his own doubts that “the Iranians will ever agree to something that would cause them to lay down any ambitions of nuclear weaponry.”

“At some point,” Huckabee added,” the United States needs to say: enough is enough. We’re not going to continue to believe that [Iran] is ever going to be different from what they are. And it’s time for them to either make a radical change of their point of view and their direction, or [face the consequences].”

While Huckabee conceded that Trump has made it clear that another attack on Iran is “not his first choice. . . his absolute desire [is] to make sure that they do not continue to wreak havoc in the world.”

He also emphasized that the U.S. and Israel are “absolutely aligned in our understanding that Iran has to be dealt with and it cannot continue as it is. They cannot remain a nuclear threat. They cannot continue to build extraordinary surpluses of ballistic missiles and aim them, not just at Israel, but also at the rest of the world.”

Those Who Know Trump Best Trust His Judgment

Netanyahu’s speech to the Presidents Conference was also significant for what it did not contain. The prime minister had no criticism at all of President Trump or his decision to exhaust the possibilities of negotiating an agreement with the Iranian regime before issuing the order to U.S. military forces in the area to attack Iran.

In addition, CBS News reported over the weekend that U.S. military and intelligence agencies are now busy planning how to fulfill a promise that President Trump made to Netanyahu during their previous meeting at Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago home in December. Trump reportedly pledged at the time that if diplomatic efforts fail to reach a new U.S. deal with Iran, the U.S. would do everything it could, short of attacking Iran itself, to support a new round of Israeli air strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Meanwhile, some Israeli commentators do not share Netanyahu’s confidence in Trump’s ability to get the best of the Iranians at the negotiating table. However, Jason Greenblatt, who was the executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization before serving for three years as a White House negotiator during Trump’s first term, has every confidence in the president’s unique negotiating skills.

Greenblatt wrote in an opinion piece published in the Arab News in Saudi Arabia, that when it comes to his negotiating strategy, “No one knows what is in President Donald Trump’s head, and that is by design. Revealing his strategy would forfeit leverage, eliminate surprise, and weaken negotiations before they even begin.”

In Trump’s case, Greenblatt believes, “Strategic ambiguity is not confusion. It is strength.”

Many predicted he would strike Iran quickly [after the demonstrations broke out in Iran]. “I did not,” Greenblatt wrote. “Weeks ago, I wrote that he would first test whether diplomacy could work — real diplomacy, aimed at real results. Not another paper promise that looks good in headlines and collapses in practice [like] the last deal [with Iran in 2015].”

Greenblatt has every confidence that Trump will push for an agreement with Iran that “is verifiable, enforceable, and immediate. One that addresses Iran’s growing missile capabilities and regional aggression. . . [as well as] the threat to Israel and to America’s Arab allies. . . [that] if left unchecked, will only grow far more dangerous.”

Greenblatt has only the greatest respect for Trump’s motivations and capabilities. He writes, “Trump seeks peace and prosperity. That is what drives him. He is, at heart, a dealmaker. . . Trump has rebuilt American strength and is unafraid to use it. He negotiates from power, not apology. Over 23 years, I watched him close deals that so-called experts dismissed as fantasy. He does not accept conventional limits.

“No one should fault him for exhausting every peaceful option before choosing the hard path. . . If there is a responsible way to avoid war, a president must pursue it. That does not mean Trump is being played. He recognizes deception. He senses bad faith. If negotiations become a charade, he will know. Quickly.”

Greenblatt is also confident that in the end, if Trump “ultimately concludes that force is necessary, or that supporting Israel in war is unavoidable, he will do so knowing he explored every alternative.”

Trump’s Military Buildup Continues

Meanwhile, last Thursday, President Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to dispatch its newest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and the other vessels in its strike group, to join the USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group in Middle East waters, “in case there isn’t a deal” reached in the current negotiations to avoid another U.S. military attack on Iran.

The Gerald R. Ford and its strike group had been on patrol in Caribbean waters since October. The ships provided air support for the successful January 3 raid by U.S. commandos, which captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife at a military compound in the capital city of Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial in federal court for bringing large quantities of illegal drugs into the United States.

As part of the U.S. military buildup for a possible attack on Iran, the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, is now being protected from a possible Iranian missile attack by Patriot air defense systems, and that recent satellite images show the presence at the base of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft, three Hercules transport planes, 18 KC-135 refueling aircraft and seven C-17 transport aircraft.

Satellite surveillance images reveal the recent arrival at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan of 17 American F-15 fighter jets, eight A-10 ground attack aircraft, four Hercules transports, four helicopters, and four EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft. Additional U.S. aircraft have also been spotted at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, and at the large air base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia that the U.S. shares with British armed forces.

Taken all together, the ships and planes that Trump has recently moved into waters within striking distance of Iran now comprise one-third of the U.S. Navy’s global capabilities.

Israel Hayom has reported that Israeli officials are “concerned about Iran’s progress in restoring its ballistic missile stockpiles and capabilities to their pre-12-day war levels.” According to an Israeli intelligence assessment, without an armed intervention against Iran, it could assemble an arsenal threatening Israel with “between 1,800 and 2,000 ballistic missiles within weeks.”

In response, Israeli defense firms have been busy restocking its arsenal of interceptor missiles which had been seriously depleted by the Iranian mass missile strikes during last June’s war, while the IDF’s missile defense command has been working to apply the lessons learned during the war, to counter the tactics that Iran developed at the end of that war that enabled more of its missiles to get through Israel’s defenses.

Why Did the White House Downplay Netanyahu’s Latest Visit?

President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have been happy to publicize their close partnership in the past. However, the Israeli leader’s most recent visit to Washington, primarily to discuss the negotiations with Iran, which was hastily rescheduled, was deliberately downplayed by the White House. Their meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, February 11, was closed to the media, in sharp contrast to the handling of Netanyahu’s previous visits.

Aside from general statements indicating that the talks between Trump and Netanyahu went well, public comments by other administration officials about their discussions behind closed doors concerning Iran were extremely limited.

Trump did not offer reporters the familiar photo opportunity of him greeting Netanyahu upon his arrival at the White House as friends, nor was there the usual joint press conference after their Oval Office meeting.

Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. was extremely brief. Not only did he forgo the usual briefing for the members of the Israeli media who were traveling with him, but he also skipped the opportunity to be interviewed by American news outlets. In total, Netanyahu spent only 30 hours on the ground in the United States, enabling his plane to take off for the return trip to Israel in time for him to arrive before Shabbos began there.

Ariel Kahana, a commentator for Israel Hayom, has speculated that perhaps Trump did not want to raise concerns among his MAGA supporters and the rest American people that he and Netanyahu were conducting a “war council,” and were about to involve the United States in another war in the Middle East. Or perhaps Trump did not want to convey the impression that his decisions about U.S. policy towards Iran are being influenced too strongly by the views of the Israeli prime minister.

In a social media post following his White House meeting with Netanyahu, Trump wrote that “nothing definitive” about Iran had been decided and that he had “insisted that negotiations with Iran continue,” and that if those negotiations fail to reach an agreement, “we will just have to see what the outcome will be,” implying that another U.S. military attack on Iran was still a real possibility.

Netanyahu’s comments immediately following his White House meeting with Trump were even more cryptic, saying only that the prime minister had “emphasized Israel’s security needs in the context of the negotiations” between the U.S. and Iran without providing any specifics.

Why Trump and His Team Can Be Trusted to Stand Up to Iran

The anti-Trumpers who say that Trump will not press Iran for concessions on issues other than its nuclear program overlook Trump’s comment in a recent Fox News interview that “we have to deal with the missiles and everything else [that is of concern about Iran’s policies].”

Kahana added, “The positions over the years of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Trump himself regarding Iran are well-known. Anyone who believes they have suddenly [been] transformed into Barack Obama or [former Biden Secretary of State] Antony Blinken does not understand the players involved.”

Perhaps the best explanation for the current relatively low-key recent handling of the Iran issue by the White House was offered by Louisiana’s Republican senator, John Kennedy. After emerging from a meeting with President Trump last week, Kennedy said that the president would “honor his commitments to [bring help to] the Iranian people,” but stressed that this required “a careful strategy, not hasty actions.” Kennedy suggested that the latest Israeli intelligence on Iran, which Netanyahu no doubt conveyed to Trump during their most recent meeting, had helped the two leaders to clarify their current military options with regard to Iran.

Aside from references to the large “armada” of U.S. Navy warships that he has assembled within striking distance of Iran, President Trump has said very little about the kind of attack that his military advisers are planning against Iran, except that it “will be far worse” than the powerful air strikes that destroyed three of Iran’s underground nuclear facilities last June, and that “time is running out” for Iran to agree to a deal that would prevent such an attack.

Senator Kennedy’s hawkish views towards Iran are also known to be shared by his Republican colleague from South Carolina, Senator Lindsay Graham, who has been publicly supporting Netanyahu’s calls for bold U.S. action against Iran for years, and has spent a lot of time recently as Trump’s guest at the president’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

Trump Urged to Strike Now When Iran Is at Its Weakest

During his visit to the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany last Friday, Graham said in an interview with CNN that he believes the U.S. and its allies must take advantage of the current opportunity to promote regime change in Iran, because its leaders “are the weakest they’ve been since 1979.

“It is a regime with American blood on its hands,” Graham explained. “It is a great disruptor of the region. It’s a religious theocracy that, if they could get a nuclear weapon, they would use it to advance their religious goals, which are three. Purify Islam, destroy the Jewish state, and come after us [the United States].

“Hitler wrote [in] a book [that] he wanted to kill all the Jews. Nobody believed him. I believe the Ayatollah and his regime — [but] not the Iranian people — are religious fanatics, religious Nazis. Hitler wanted a master race. They want a master religion.”

When asked by CNN whether he was advocating regime change in Iran, Graham confirmed, “Yes, I am. Totally. If you’re not, you’re crazy. . . If we back out now, it’ll be the biggest mistake we’ve made.

“Here’s the ‘day after’ I worry the most about,” Graham said. “The day after we blinked [in our confrontation with Iran]. The day after we made promises that we didn’t keep. We made assurances that fell short. That day after is generational damage. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis — they don’t go away. They come back stronger. . . The day after, if we get it right, the mother ship of terrorism [Iran] goes down. Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah — they’ve lost their biggest benefactor.”

During a visit to Israel this week, Senator Graham told a press conference in Tel Aviv that a decision by President Trump on whether or not to order another U.S. attack on Iran is just “weeks, not months” away, and that one of the reasons behind his visit was “to reassure the Israeli people there is no light” between the U.S. and Israel on the issue of Iran.

Also, while Graham admitted that “the risk of regime change is real. There are unknowns. But [also] let me just say this, I’m willing to take that risk.”

Meanwhile, as the new round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran plays out, the Israeli military has been busy reinforcing and updating its multi-layer missile defenses in anticipation of another round of Iranian missile attacks when the peace talks fail, as most Israeli leaders expect them to do.

Both Sides Planning for the Next War

With Iran’s nuclear program believed to be still in disarray following the devastating American bombing attacks on its main nuclear facilities last June, Iran’s surviving ballistic missile arsenal is its most effective remaining weapon. Israeli officials believe that if another war does break out, Iran will try to overwhelm Israel’s advanced missile defenses with the sheer volume of its long-range ballistic missile salvos, a strategy which proved to be more effective during the final days of last June’s war.

If another war breaks out with Iran, one of the main missions of the warplanes aboard the two American aircraft carriers and the missile-launching destroyers accompanying them in Middle Eastern waters, will be to help shoot down the expected barrages of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones aimed at Israel, and at bases where American troops are stationed in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

It is also supposed that some of their strikes would target Iran’s vulnerable energy infrastructure, which is vital to its export economy.

According to Massoud Nili, who served as an economic minister in several previous Iranian governments, 85% of Iran’s energy resources are concentrated in a very small geographic area, specifically the South Pars oil field located just offshore in the Persian Gulf, and Kharg Island, which serves as Iran’s primary oil export terminal.

In addition, Nili said, other major sections of Iran’s economy, such as its automobile and steel producing infrastructures, are equally vulnerable to attack, while other formerly productive sectors of Iran’s economy have been allowed to deteriorate, making the country much more dependent in recent years on massive imports of food, clothing, and more advanced products, such as electronics.

Iran Expected to Launch a Massive Missile Barrage Against Israel

In an interview with the Ynet website, Tal Inbar, an Israeli senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said that Iran has not yet shown Israel its capability for “extremely massive fire” involving the simultaneous launching of many hundreds or even thousands of missiles. “But in a war in which the Iranian regime feels these are its final hours, it will fire everything it has,” Inbar predicted.

As a result, as the U.S. military continues to send more of its forces to the Middle East in anticipation of the next war with Iran, Israel’s multi-layer missile defense system remains on high alert, as its technicians continue to work to make it more effective. In a recent Ynet interview, an Iron Dome missile defense battery commander, identified as Major N., said, “The current versions of Iron Dome are not what they were during Operation Rising Lion [last June]. In this arms race with Iran, we’ve changed quite a bit in recent months through the constant implementation of many lessons learned.”

That is why Inbar believes that if the United States does initiate the attack on Iran next time, it will begin with a military operation designed to prevent, as much as possible, Iran’s ability to launch such a massive missile attack by, for example, launching “a barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles [aimed at] various [missile] launch sites in Iran.”

“For most of the past month,” Major N. continued, “we’ve focused mainly on training — not just in simulators but also in the field, including live-fire drills simulating threat interceptions. We debrief everything, successes and failures alike, in a long marathon of learning. It’s safe to assume the next round will be different on the other side as well. When the moment comes, our soldiers will be ready,” Major N. declared.

Israel’s missile defense system consists of three layers, including Iron Dome, which is effective for stopping short-range missiles and artillery, David’s Sling, for medium-range missiles, and the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems, which are designed to stop long-range and advanced, multi-warhead guided missiles.

Thanks to constant improvements by Israeli technicians since the Iron Dome system first became operational fifteen years ago, Israel’s missile interception rate has risen to about 90%. The system’s greatest vulnerability is that it relies on a limited stockpile of interceptor rockets to shoot down incoming missiles, which means that Israel’s supply of interceptors could be exhausted if the war lasts for too long, or the defense system could be overwhelmed if Iran launches enough missiles at the same target in Israel simultaneously.

Israel’s Long‑Term Answer to Iran’s Missile Threat

To deal with that problem, the IDF has recently deployed the first effective laser-beam-based missile defense system, known as the Iron Beam. It runs entirely on electrical power and does not rely on missile interceptors, so it is much cheaper to operate than Israel’s other missile defense systems and will never run out of ammunition.

The current effectiveness of the Iron Beam is limited to the same targets as the Iron Dome system, namely short-range rockets and artillery shells. However, as the laser technology of the Iron Beam is further developed, it is expected to make much of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal obsolete.

In the meantime, each of Israel’s separate missile defense systems can operate on its own effectively, Major N. said, “but we are far better together — and that’s a key part of the training. We learned on October 7 that no enemy can be underestimated, and we know how to adapt ourselves to any [situation].”

Ultimately, Israel’s security is in the Hands of Hashem, and we all join in tefillah that Hashem will have mercy on His people.