U.S. President Donald Trump said on the evening of Wednesday, May 20, that he was willing to wait a few days for Iran’s latest response to Washington’s proposal for a war-ending agreement, but warned that the response would have to be “100 percent right.”
At the same time, additional details of Trump’s most recent phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have emerged in U.S. media reports, indicating disagreements between the two wartime partners regarding Iran.
After the news website Axios first reported on Netanyahu’s tense conversation with Trump on Tuesday, May 19, CNN later reported that the tension stemmed from differences over how Iran should be handled in the coming days and weeks.
According to an unnamed U.S. government official cited by CNN, the American and Israeli leaders initially held a phone conversation on Sunday, during which Trump reportedly agreed with Netanyahu that targeted strikes against Iran in the following week might be necessary.
However, less than 24 hours later, on Monday evening, the U.S. president announced in a message on his social media platform that, at the request of Arab leaders from Gulf countries, he would temporarily hold back.
According to CNN, this new decision by Trump disappointed and frustrated Netanyahu, and during another phone conversation on Tuesday, Netanyahu reportedly told him that delaying the attacks would be a mistake.
The network, citing multiple sources in both the U.S. and Israeli governments, reported that Netanyahu argued that delaying the planned strikes would ultimately benefit the Iranian government and that Trump should proceed according to the original plan.
Netanyahu has long maintained that a stronger and more forceful stance should be taken against the Islamic Republic. In this context, last month, The New York Times reported that two weeks before the joint operation against Iran, Netanyahu had visited the White House with a detailed military plan and presented it to Trump.
