The last time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump met face-to-face was in February. Just before the launch of Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury, the prime minister and the US president sat down to finalize plans for war.
Away from the cameras and reporters' questions, with only a single, and not particularly high-quality, official photograph released, the two leaders spent several hours coordinating the operation they hoped would reshape Iran. The war began. Iran's regime suffered severe damage, but it survived.
Now Netanyahu and Trump have met again, but where do the talks go from here?
For Netanyahu, the objective is clear: overthrow the Iranian regime. To achieve that, he reportedly argued that the United States should strike Iran's energy infrastructure, target senior regime officials, and take a step Trump has so far refused to authorize: operations designed to destabilize the regime itself.
Will Trump and Netanyahu find middle ground on Iran?
Trump now finds himself involved in a conflict without a clear exit strategy.
Trump has no desire to send American troops to fight on Iranian soil, but neither is he willing to back down in the face of Tehran. He wants to hit Iran hard, yet remains cautious about triggering a global energy crisis.
As a result, it remains unclear how far he is prepared to go in targeting Iran's energy infrastructure, despite repeatedly threatening to do exactly that over the past several weeks.
Recent history suggests that whenever even the slightest opening for diplomacy with Iran has emerged, Trump has been willing to explore it. That appears to be the case once again.
Despite Tehran's fiery public rhetoric, Iranian officials continue to hold talks with the United States. And if, as has repeatedly happened in recent months, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under Ahmad Vahidi ultimately rejects any compromise proposal, Trump still appears willing, for now, to give diplomacy another chance.
At the same time, it is entirely possible that Netanyahu and Trump will keep everyone guessing, just as they have before. Countless articles were written about the supposedly strained relationship between the two leaders ahead of Operation Rising Lion, Israel's June 2025 strike on Iran.
Then, in February 2026, the prevailing narrative was that Netanyahu had traveled to Washington to stop Trump from making concessions in a potential agreement with Iran. Instead, only a short time later, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against the Iranian regime, fighting side by side.
As former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said: "There are unknown unknowns."
That may be the most accurate description of the current situation.