00:00Well, for more on Iran and some of the other topics that will be on the agenda today at
00:06that meeting with Netanyahu and Trump, I'm joined now on the line by Aaron David Miller.
00:11He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, as
00:17well as a former Middle East analyst and a negotiator at the State Department in the
00:22US for both Republican and Democrat administrations.
00:26Good afternoon.
00:27Welcome to the programme, Mr Miller.
00:29Thanks so much for giving us your time.
00:32So, Netanyahu and Trump, they will definitely be talking about Iran.
00:37Let's start with that.
00:40The Israelis don't trust Iran.
00:42They're worried that Trump might settle for a sort of bare bones deal with the Iranian regime.
00:48And Netanyahu clearly thinks that Iran is weak.
00:51This is the best time in ages to try to force it into a deal.
00:55Will they persuade Trump of that?
00:58Or is that already Trump's thinking?
01:01No, your analysis is absolutely correct.
01:03If this were 2015, the Israeli prime minister, as he did, would have had much more influence
01:11than it was the Democratic administration.
01:13He would have appealed and did appeal over the heads of Barack Obama on the Iran nuclear deal with the
01:18Republican Party.
01:19He addressed it during session of Congress.
01:21Right now, Netanyahu, frankly, has very little influence of the president.
01:25Trump owns the Republican Party.
01:28And despite some MAGA critics of his Israel policy, the party will fall in line behind what Donald Trump wants.
01:35So Netanyahu's capacity to influence Donald Trump on this issue, I think, is pretty small.
01:41I think, and I think you're right, that his saving grace will be Iran's unwillingness to accept either clearly what
01:50terms the Israelis want,
01:51and I suspect what the Americans are proposing as well.
01:55What do you think is Trump's thinking?
01:58And, you know, further back in January, when all of those demonstrators were out on the streets and Trump said,
02:04help is on the way, keep coming out, you know, how important in any deal will be the idea of
02:11toppling the regime?
02:12Or is that just simply too risky?
02:15What do you think Trump's thinking is likely to be?
02:18You know, I think the president put himself in a box.
02:21Unlike any of his predecessors, Republican or Democrat, in response to Iranian protests,
02:26he said things which, frankly, you could argue were morally and ethically unconscionable.
02:31He basically told the Iranians already in the streets to seize their institutions.
02:36He told them that help is on the way.
02:38He told them that we will hit you hard.
02:40You've got reports of, what, in double digits of the number of Iranians that this repressive, murderous regime has killed
02:47in these demonstrations.
02:49I think Trump's in a box.
02:50On one hand, he does not want to end up like Barack Obama on the chemical weapons redline issue,
02:55when Obama in 2012 basically said the Assad regime's use of chemicals was a redline.
03:02But on the other, I think he's very wary of the prospects that the Iranians, now desperate and under great
03:10pressure,
03:11might strike an effort to regionalize the war, which is something he doesn't want.
03:16And the people he cares most about, the Qataris, the Saudis, the Emiratis, they don't want this either.
03:23So he's in a box now.
03:25And frankly, I would argue to you that the prospects of a deal, a significant breakthrough agreement, probably very small.
03:34He's got this huge deployment of American military hardware out in the region.
03:39I suspect the balance is leaning in favor at some point of military strikes.
03:45And what about the position of countries like Turkey, for example, on that?
03:49He listens to Erdogan a great deal as well.
03:53Yeah, I mean, and that's another great fear, of course, that the Israelis have,
03:58that Mr. Trump is listening to Erdogan when it comes to Gaza and Erdogan's support for Hamas.
04:05So there's a complex of issues that they're going to talk about.
04:09Let's keep one thing in mind, though.
04:10This is the seventh meeting of an Israeli prime minister and an American president
04:16in the first year of an American president's second term.
04:21That's extraordinary.
04:22It's almost as if these meetings have become routine.
04:25And frankly, that's why I would not look for breakthroughs in this meeting.
04:30And I certainly wouldn't look for breakdowns.
04:33They still need one another.
04:34They may not trust one another.
04:37They may not like one another.
04:38But their relationship is...
04:40But their relationship is...
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