Reprinted from John’s Substack:
On 12 February 2026, I appeared on “Judging Freedom” to talk about the meeting between PM Netanyahu and President Trump at the White House the day before (11 February). Relatedly, we spoke about Israel’s various demands and the utility of employing military force to achieve them.
I emphasized that Trump appears to be looking to negotiate a deal with Iran so that he can avoid using military force. The Israelis do not want any negations with Iran, but if negotiations have to take place, they want them to end up: 1) eliminating Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability, 2) eliminating any Iranian ballistic missiles that can strike Israel, 3) eliminating Iran’s support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
Iran, however, simply refuses to negotiate about any of those demands, and will only discuss putting limits on its nuclear enrichment capability, similar to what happened with the JCPOA in the 2015 deal. This is anathema to Netanyahu and other hawkish Israelis.
It seems that Trump recognizes that he has no way of using military force to pressure Iran into accepting Israel’s demands or toppling the regime to get a government that will accept those demands. Thus, he has effectively been forced to negotiate with Iran over limiting its nuclear enrichment capabilities, which infuriates Netanyahu. Unsurprisingly, it was clear after the meeting that it went badly for Israel.
Of course, what will happen now is that the Israel firsters here in the US will go to work to pressure Trump to launch an attack against Iran, even though it is not in the American national interest. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
