President Trump will welcome Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to the White House on Tuesday for his first in-person meeting with another world leader since returning to power two weeks ago.
The two are expected to discuss negotiations for the second phase of the fragile cease-fire with Hamas, Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon, new arms shipments and hopes for a deal to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia.
The meeting, which is part of a multiday visit to Washington by Mr. Netanyahu, is meant to demonstrate the close ties between the two leaders after more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas severely strained the relationship between the Israeli leader and President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu had forged a close partnership during the president’s first term. In remarks to reporters over the weekend, Mr. Trump said he was looking forward to the meeting.
“The discussions on the Middle East with Israel and various and sundry other countries are progressing,” the president said, adding that Mr. Netanyahu would be “coming on Tuesday, and I think we have some very big meetings scheduled.”
But Mr. Netanyahu will be going into his meeting at odds with Mr. Trump on several key issues, according to analysts. Those include the questions of how to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how quickly to end the war in Gaza.
The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to see all the hostages held by Hamas returned and then move on to a grand bargain involving Saudi Arabia that formalizes relations with Israel. All of that hinges on an end to fighting in the Palestinian enclave.
With Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government in jeopardy if the war ends with Hamas still in control there, and with no other plan for Gaza in place, analysts expect the Israeli prime minister to try to delay moving to the next stage of the deal, which calls for a permanent cease-fire.
“Netanyahu made this salami deal,” said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, referring to the three-phased agreement with Hamas. “He’s always playing for time and kicking the can down the road — something he is an expert in. Trump wants to cut to the chase and end the war.”
Mr. Netanyahu is also in a vulnerable position internationally, with an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court accusing him of war crimes during the conflict with Hamas.
“The stakes are really high for the prime minister, to be clear,” said Thomas R. Nides, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. “President Trump is holding all the cards and is really clear he wants to see all the hostages come home.”
Negotiations have begun to move beyond the first phase of the cease-fire in Gaza, during which Hamas has pledged to release 33 prisoners in exchange for a pullback of Israeli troops from populated areas in Gaza and freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for the deal, which was actually negotiated for months during the Biden administration. But the fate of the second phase of the deal — in which the cease-fire is supposed to become permanent — will be on Mr. Trump’s watch. Mr. Netanyahu met in Washington on Monday with Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy.
Adding to the anxiety in the region were reports on Monday that U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran is seeking to build a cruder atomic weapon that could be developed quickly if the leadership in Tehran decided to do so.
It remains unclear whether that decision has been made, and Iran’s new president has indicated that he would like to begin a negotiation with Mr. Trump’s administration even as the country’s nuclear scientists push ahead with their efforts.
Mr. Netanyahu has said for years that letting Iran become a nuclear power would be an existential threat to Israel and an enormously destabilizing event for the United States and nations across the globe. In 2018, Mr. Trump pulled out of a deal negotiated during the Obama administration that aimed to put limits on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu are likely to discuss other ways to keep Iran from succeeding in building a bomb, including the possibility of taking military action against Tehran’s nuclear facilities. The prime minister has advocated taking military action in the past, but Israel has always pulled back after pressure from the United States.
At the same time, the two leaders are also expected to discuss the possibility of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia. Mr. Trump had pushed the idea during his first term, and Mr. Biden continued to do so after he took office. The war with Hamas, which began after attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people, stalled that effort.
Also on the agenda is a request by Mr. Netanyahu for the United States to move forward with a set of pending arms transfers to Israel that amount to over $8 billion worth of bombs, missiles, artillery and other weapons. Those orders are still in an informal congressional review process. A U.S. official said the State Department was moving forward with two additional large sets of orders of weapons for use — one for thousands more bombs and one for armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the arms shipments, said the Trump administration had begun to make to Congress the informal notifications necessary to initiate the weapons transfers. Mr. Biden had paused a single shipment of the largest U.S.-made bombs to Israel amid outrage over bombing by Israeli forces that has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, in Gaza. Mr. Trump has told the Pentagon to proceed with the shipment.
Edward Wong contributed reporting.
