Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took off Monday for Washington, where he will meet with President Trump and pay his last respects to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
The 76-year-old departed from an Israeli Air Force installation near Beersheba rather than Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in response to potential threats from Iran, The Times of Israel reported.
In a Hebrew-language post on social media, Netanyahu said he and Trump “will discuss all the issues on the table, with Iran at the forefront.”
“Our goal is clear,” he added, “to safeguard Israel’s security, strengthen its power, and expand the circle of peace around us.”
Netanyahu is making his way to Washington as the US has paused its attacks on Iran after 13 consecutive nights of airstrikes.
In an interview with Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” the prime minister said the US and Israel had set back Iran’s nuclear program by “a good few years .. but it doesn’t mean that you can’t have the attempt to restore it, and we have to be on the constant, constant watch so it doesn’t happen.”
Trump and Netanyahu will meet as the US pushes once again for a diplomatic end to the war after the president ordered a halt to the tit-for-tat strikes.
The president, however, maintained that all-out war would reignite if Tehran failed to submit to his demands to abandon any ambition to produce a nuclear weapon and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump previously signaled a willingness to bomb a suspected Iranian nuclear facility at Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz, with American forces also reportedly ready to launch a ground operation to seize hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium believed to be entombed there.
The Islamic Republic rejected Trump’s latest cease-fire proposal last week, with Iranian drones continuing to attack US allies in the Middle East on Monday.
Incursions were reported in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq, with Tehran also intercepting six more ships in the Strait of Hormuz, one of which suffered “an accident,” Iranian state media claimed.
Tehran Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that while talks were ongoing with mediators, striking a quick deal with the US “is not in our DNA.”
