During an Israeli Cabinet meeting today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confessed that the Trump administration has Netanyahu on speed dial so it can report to him “every day” about the Iran war U.S. President Donald Trump started on Israel’s behalf.
The latest on the tail-wags-dog relationship comes from Axios writer Barak Ravid, a former Israeli military intelligence operative in constant contact with Israeli officials.
That news follows a report in The New York Times that Netanyahu lied to Trump during a briefing in February in the White House Situation Room to push him into attacking Iran.
Amusingly, Trump told Fox News that the U.S.-Israel relationship is one of big brother-little brother, with the United States being the big brother. The latest from Netanyahu suggests that Trump had it backwards.
But in any event, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Joe Kent noted that the administration’s position during failed peace talks over the weekend — that Iran cannot have any enriched uranium — reversed long-standing U.S. policy and “killed” the talks.
And in yet another off-the-cuff remark to reporters, Trump said today that the U.S. might attack Cuba after it is done with Iran.
Netanyahu: Trump Reports to Me
In an alarming report that showed Trump ignored Vice President J.D. Vance’s advice not to start a war with Iran, the Times divulged that Netanyahu lied to Trump about Iran’s capabilities and what would ensue after a U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign.
“In the Situation Room on Feb. 11, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic,” the Times reported:
At one point, the Israelis played for Mr. Trump a brief video that included a montage of potential new leaders who could take over the country if the hard-line government fell. Among those featured was Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, now a Washington-based dissident who had tried to position himself as a secular leader who could shepherd Iran toward a post-theocratic government.
Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.
Besides, Mossad’s intelligence indicated that street protests inside Iran would begin again and — with the impetus of the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion — an intense bombing campaign could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime.
American intelligence analysts called the claims “farcical,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them “bullsh*t.”
Nonetheless, Trump forged ahead, ignoring Vance, whom he dispatched to Pakistan during the weekend for peace talks with Iran. Those talks failed. Now, pursuant to orders from Trump, the U.S. Navy is blockading the strait.
Now comes the Israeli Ravid, the former Israeli intelligence operative whose reports frequently feature the words “an Israeli official told me.”
“Netanyahu at a cabinet meeting,” Ravid began on X, introducing Netanyahu’s words:
I spoke yesterday with Vice President J.D. Vance. He called me from his plane on his way back from Islamabad. He reported to me in detail, as this administration does every day, about the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations. The explosion came from the American side, which could not tolerate Iran’s blatant violation of the agreement to enter the negotiations. The agreement was that they would cease fire, and the Iranians would immediately open the gates. They did not do that. The Americans could not accept that. He also made it clear to me that the main issue on the agenda for President Trump and the United States is the removal of all enriched material, and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years, and that could be in decades, no enrichment within Iran. That is their focus, and of course it is also important to us.
“I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal out of this,” podcaster Glenn Greenwald wrote on X:
It’s totally normal, everywhere on earth, to report in to your boss regularly — even every day if he wants.
“The Trump administration daily reports to Netanyahu on the Iranian war, but not Congress or the American people,” far-left Democratic Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin complained on X. “Let that sink in.”
Who’s the Big Brother?
Speaking to Fox talker Maria Bartiromo, Trump quoted Netanyahu to suggest that the United States controls Israel, not the reverse.
“Look at the incredible partnership we have on this,” Trump said:
You know as Bibi Netanyahu said, we’re the … big brother and they’re the small brother, and you know, it’s been a very effective, very effective team, what we’ve done in a literally in a matter of days, within three, four, days.
But beyond the disturbing news that Netanyahu is apparently in charge of the Trump administration is his claim that “the main issue on the agenda for President Trump and the United States is the removal of all enriched material, and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years, and that could be in decades, no enrichment within Iran. That is their focus, and of course it is also important to us.”
Change in Policy
That “no enrichment” policy is a change from the past, Joe Kent noted on X, and is what deep-sixed the peace talks.
“Trump’s redline has always been no nuclear weapons for Iran, not zero enrichment,” he explained:
Iran agrees with this and has not sought to develop or obtain a nuke since 2003 but needs to retain the ability to enrich for their “not Saddam but not Qaddafi” policy to work.
This makes negotiations between the U.S. & Iran workable as the dispute is on levels of enrichment and monitoring.
This is a threat to Israel getting us to do the heavy lifting in the regime change/decapitation war they want.
Israel wants the U.S. to scoop up “every trace of uranium in Iran,” Kent said, because it will require open-ended American involvement there, which in turn means regime change.
“How do we ever fully make sure Iran can’t enrich without taking out the regime?” the former Green Beret combat veteran wrote:
This is the recipe for an endless bloody war or supporting/turning a blind eye to Israel using a WMD on Iran.
Restrain Israel, get a deal, open the [Strait of Hormuz], focus on saving our Republic, not playing empire.
Kent posted a video from Fox News illustrating his point. It features reporter Peter Doocy explaining that just weeks ago, Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner told Iran it could have uranium for peaceful purposes, meaning nuclear power, which requires enrichment. Yet Vance’s offer was zero enrichment. That collapsed the talks.
Insisting on zero enrichment, Kent wrote, “is an Israeli/Neocon ploy to force conflict.”
On to Cuba
And the conflict won’t end with Iran, Trump said today.
Speaking at the White House today as he accepted a delivery from McDonald’s, Trump let the delivery driver in on a little secret. Cuba is next on his list of targets.
“And we’re gonna do this, and we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” he told reporters. “Cuba is a nation that’s been horribly run for many years by Castro.”
A Fox News talker noted that the McDonald’s driver is “not gonna forget that delivery.”
