U.S. President Donald Trump is set to hold that urgent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a week earlier than was originally planned to discuss negotiations with Iran.
Trump has repeatedly told the Iranian regime that it needs to do two things to avoid military action as the U.S. builds up its forces in the Gulf.
“I told them two things. Number one, no nuclear. And number two, stop killing protestors,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “They’re killing them by the thousands.”
Netanyahu’s office insists that all negotiations must include limiting Iran’s ballistic missiles and ending Tehran’s support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister said, “The attempt by the most extreme regime in the world to obtain the most dangerous weapon in the world, a nuclear weapon, is a clear danger to peace in the region and in the world.”
The announcement about the urgent meeting with Israel came after U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, held negotiations in Oman with Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi over a potential nuclear deal.
The Trump administration has been talking to Iran since Trump’s presidency in January last year but Iran has not agreed on a deal not to produce nuclear weapons.
“Iran looks like they want to make a deal very badly, as they should. Last time they decided maybe not to do it, but I think they probably feel differently,” Trump told reporters.
“It’ll be different than last time. And we have a big armada, we have a big fleet heading in that direction. We’ll be there pretty soon,” he added.
Following those talks, Witkoff and Kushner visited the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, thanking the sailors and marines aboard, as well as the pilot who downed an Iranian drone approaching the carrier last week.
The carrier and the warships in the strike group are deployed off Iran’s shore in the Arabian Sea and would be the spearhead of any U.S. military action against Iran.
Meanwhile, the Iranian leader urged Iranians to unify and participate in the coming anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, a 1979 uprising that ousted the pro-Western Shah, installing a dictatorship that enforces Sharia law.
“As long as the enemy is not made to despair, a nation remains exposed to harm and harassment. The enemy must be made to despair,” said Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
The Trump administration repeatedly warned about what it calls the growing global threat of Islamist ideology in the West.
“Now they want to go to Sharia law, but you’re in a different country. You can’t do that,” Trump said during the United Nations General Assembly 2025.
“When we talk about the threat of Islamism, this political ideology, there is no such thing as individual freedom or liberty,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest last December.
