Unpacking Netanyahu’s rush to Washington

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington this week for his seventh meeting with US President Donald Trump, carrying with him intelligence files, a track record of bypassing American diplomacy when it suits him, and a deep conviction that the US is about to make a deal that could leave Israel vulnerable. The meeting with Trump on Feb. 11 was moved up a full week from its original date and took place shortly after talks began between Iran and the US. This was not a routine consultation between allies, it was an intervention.

The meeting followed weeks of tension in the wake of Iran’s crackdown on mass protests in January and December. At the time, Trump called on Iranians to take over state institutions, saying that “help was on its way.”

But the help never came. Instead, the US seemingly backed down on its earlier aggressive posture and is currently exploring a potential deal with the Islamic Republic. And while Washington has sent an armada of ships and aircraft to the region, Israel appears to be worried that the US could quietly drop some important conditions, particularly when it comes to Tehran’s ballistic missile program.

Netanyahu asked that the meeting be brought forward just days after the first round of US-Iran indirect talks ended in Oman. The apparent urgency to meet Trump likely stems from two main factors. The first is a surprising sense of self-confidence Tehran is displaying — refusing to budge even as it faces the prospect of US strikes at a moment when the regime is at its weakest.

Instead of accommodating Washington, Iran has moved to change the venue of the talks from Turkiye to Oman, sidelined other Arab countries that were supposed to have a role, and launched a series of provocations in the Gulf, including by boarding tankers and flying drones in the direction of a USS carrier group stationed in the Arabian Sea.

This policy of defiance has been a hallmark of the regime

Michael Horowitz

Furthermore, Iran has repeatedly said that it is only willing to negotiate on its nuclear program, dashing efforts also to limit stockpiles of ballistic missiles and support for Iranian proxies across the region. Even on the nuclear file, Iran appears unwilling to discuss a full dismantling of its program, with zero enrichment, and is floating the idea of getting full sanctions relief for concessions that Israel views as minimal.

This amount of bravado would be notable under any circumstances, but it is especially striking after a year in which the regime’s fortunes have deteriorated so dramatically. Tehran has seen its key proxy, Hezbollah, hammered by Israeli strikes, while its main regional ally, Bashar Assad, was toppled in a lightning offensive by the Syrian opposition and fled the country.

During the 12-day war, Israel took out almost all of its air defenses, a chunk of its ballistic missile arsenal, and saw one of its main underground nuclear sites targeted by US B-2 bombers. To top it off, Iran then faced a wave of protests not seen since 2009. Yet the regime is displaying defiance in the face of yet another potential catastrophe: renewed US strikes that could be aimed at collapsing the regime itself.

This self-confidence may stem from the perception that the Islamic Republic’s strategy has worked in the short term. As Trump claimed he was “locked and loaded” and ready to attack in mid-January, Iran’s regime crushed the protests. At the time, Washington likely delayed a planned strike with the aim of deploying more military assets to the region to face Iranian missile strikes against US bases in the region and potential Iranian attempts to close the critical Strait of Hormuz. That time was used to silence Iranian protests in the hope that, faced with a fait accompli, Trump would prefer a deal to an attack.

It was a gamble, but one that appears to have worked. Though anger is still boiling below the surface, the country’s streets are seemingly silent. More importantly, Trump is back at the negotiating table. 

While Tehran surely understands the situation is dire, it is using this short-term “win” to project an image of strength and defiance that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei likely feels is his only way to survive. He remembers that during the last days of the shah’s rule, the decision by Iran’s then leader to appease protesters backfired. In Khamenei’s mind, defiance is less risky than compromise — whether that is crushing protests or harassing the US armada.

To Iran observers, this approach is hardly surprising. This apparent policy of defiance has been a hallmark of the regime — and often backfired as Iran overplayed its hand. But at the same time, Israel knows Iran should not be underestimated, and neither should Trump’s appetite for a deal. In the wake of the Oman meeting, the US leader described the talks as “very good” and promised more sessions “early next week.”

Trump’s upbeat characterization of the talks did not sit well with Netanyahu. The Oman talks focused on agreeing on a framework for further negotiations, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the two sides were discussing “the requisite foundations for the resumption of both diplomatic and technical negotiations.” That language, to Netanyahu’s ears, means the parameters of a deal are changing, and he wants a say in it. Against his backdrop, the urgency of the Israeli leader’s White House visit becomes apparent — he wants to shape any decisions regarding negotiations, lest Trump agrees to scale back the demands that were laid out by US envoy Steve Witkoff last month regarding Iran’s nuclear enrichment program as well as its missile arsenal and proxies.

Witkoff’s conditions are in line with Netanyahu’s, whose office put out a statement saying: “Any agreement must not only prevent Iran from attempting to rearm itself with nuclear weapons and eliminate any possibility of uranium enrichment, but also restrict ballistic missiles and ensure the cessation of support and funding for terrorism by the Axis of Evil.”

These demands are maximalist by design. Netanyahu fears that Trump will address only the nuclear file, pocket a narrow agreement, and declare victory, leaving Iran’s ballistic missile program and proxy networks intact — something that still unsettles Israel despite its military superiority.

According to Israeli media, Netanyahu will deliver in person the same intelligence briefing he gave Witkoff during his visit to Israel on Feb. 3, which asserts that Iran could ramp up production if it is not stopped either by force or through negotiations. He hopes to convince Trump to impose far more stringent conditions than Iran can accept. Meanwhile, an unnamed source close to the Israeli PM said that Netanyahu wants to ensure Trump receives the information accurately, without it being filtered through intermediaries. In other words, Netanyahu does not trust the bureaucratic chain to convey the urgency he feels.

Another tried-and-tested way to pile on pressure is to foster uncertainty. The White House decided this meeting would be closed to the media, with no press conference planned before or after. This is a notable departure. In previous visits, Trump and Netanyahu held joint press conferences, sometimes using them to stage manage their alliance for domestic and regional audiences. The decision to seal this meeting off suggests something different is at play.

Netanyahu is also bringing a deliberately small delegation: his military secretary, Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, and acting National Security Council head Gil Reich. This makes it seem like a working meeting, not a state visit. The composition signals that the conversation will be operational and intelligence heavy, not ceremonial. When you strip a delegation down to generals and intelligence coordinators, you are preparing for a conversation about threats, not toasts.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth claimed that both sides wanted to avoid publicizing any rifts between Trump and Netanyahu regarding a potential deal with Iran. That may be true, but joint appearances can also serve the opposite purpose: not concealment, but a deliberate show of unity. An alternative explanation is that Netanyahu wants the details of the meeting to be as opaque as possible to foster uncertainty in the hope that it will spook Iran into being more willing to compromise.

The obvious complication is Trump himself, who prefers negotiations as spectacle — played out on camera — rather than quietly negotiated in back rooms. Yet he has also shown himself to be a gifted bluffer and quite hard to read, especially for overconfident autocrats, as Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro discovered when US forces seized him from his Caracas residence.

What makes this meeting especially consequential is the pattern it fits into. Netanyahu has a well-documented playbook for American diplomacy on Iran: shaping, stalling, and ultimately bypassing.

Trump has also shown himself to be a gifted bluffer

Michael Horowitz

In February 2025, during his first meeting with Trump in the new term, Netanyahu presented four scenarios for striking Iran, ranging from a unilateral Israeli attack to a US-led assault. Throughout spring 2025, while Trump pursued diplomacy with a 60-day deadline, Netanyahu remained publicly supportive but privately skeptical, ultimately waiting out the deadline before launching the strikes that became the 12-day war. Even after US bombers joined the campaign, Washington reportedly urged Tel Aviv to scale back operations as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Iran’s command structure.

In December 2025, at Mar-a-Lago, Netanyahu raised the possibility of “round two” strikes. In January 2026, he continued pushing for a second round. Now, in February, he is rushing to Washington to “present our approach around our principles on the negotiations.”

The pattern is unmistakable. For all the talk of a rift between the two leaders, and despite real tensions and differences, Netanyahu has managed to get his way, more or less. He positions Israel as the indispensable partner whose security equities cannot be ignored, and preserves Israel’s freedom of military action as the backstop if diplomacy fails or produces an outcome he finds unacceptable.

At the same time, Israel knows that a “limited deal” could well restrain its freedom of maneuver both diplomatically and militarily: Netanyahu can hardly criticize Trump the way he did his predecessors, and a deal may entail a de facto ban on Israeli attacks inside Iran. 

Regardless of Netanyahu’s intervention, the space for an agreement between Washington and Tehran remains narrow. The Iranian regime has little more to offer than a constrained nuclear deal, and even that comes at a moment when Israel’s strikes have already set back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and shifted the immediate threat landscape toward missiles and militias. Any deal, moreover, will be signed at the expense of Iranian protesters. Trump will not want to go down in history as the US president who rehabilitated the Islamic Republic.

Yet force is not the obvious endpoint either. Iran retains leverage, particularly the capacity to strike Gulf energy infrastructure and choke critical sea lanes in ways that would send shockwaves through global markets and land squarely on American voters’ radar. That nightmare scenario is precisely what drives regional powers to lean on Trump in turn, and these are not amateur diplomatic players. They understand his rhythms and his preference for being seen as the dealmaker who avoids the war his predecessors could not.

What emerges, then, is likely to be a slower-burning crisis than was initially expected. Both Washington and Tehran will probe, test resolve, and incrementally raise the temperature, while searching for an off-ramp that does not look like surrender. Netanyahu’s task in Washington is to ensure that as the dial turns, Israel remains the dominant voice in Trump’s ear.

• Michael Horowitz is Head of Intelligence at Le Beck International.
• This article was first published in Al Majalla.