Trump says he told Israel PM not to strike Iran
As the US and Iran work to finalize the text of a framework deal, The Muscat Framework.
President Trump confirmed that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to take military action that could interfere with advancing American/Iranian negotiations to reach a new Iran nuclear deal, he said today.
“Well, I’d like to be honest: yes, I did,” Trump, leaning into the microphone, told reporters in the Oval office today (May 28) after the swearing-in of Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro as the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia.
“It's not a warning,” Trump continued, of how he would characterize his discussion with the Israeli leader. “I said, ‘I don't think it's appropriate.’”
“We're talking, we're having very good discussions with them,” he continued, referring to five rounds of US-Iran talks that have taken place to date, most recently last Friday (May 23) in Rome.
Trump said, in his May 22 call with Netanyahu, “I said, ‘I don't think it's appropriate right now,’ because if we can settle it with a very strong document,… with inspections and no trust--….. I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now, because we’re very close to a solution.”
“Now that could change at any moment,” Trump continued. “But right now, I think they want to make a deal, and we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.”
Even before Trump made it explicit today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clearly telegraphed just after the May 22 call that Trump had given Netanyahu a red light on military action on Iran, for now, as I reported.
“The President has made it very clear…that he wants to see a deal with Iran struck, if one can be struck,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House on May 22, in a readout of the Trump-Netanyahu call. “He wants to see a deal. The president is a dealmaker, and he believes strongly in diplomacy, and he’s made that clear to the Prime Minister.”
‘The Muscat Framework’
The United States and Iran are currently working to finalize a political framework text, if possible ahead of the next International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors meeting on June 9-10. One source said he understood the document might be called “The Muscat Framework,” named in honor of the capital of Oman, which has been mediating the five rounds of US-Iran held to date in both Muscat and Rome.
“I think at some point, maybe next week or next weekend, there’s definitely going to be at least another round [of US-Iran talks], before they can finalize this text, the framework agreement,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group. “It does appear to me that it is going to be very broad.”
“I don’t rule out the possibility that, once they have a finalized text, that they might also agree on some kind of quid pro quo that could meet the requirements of the Europeans for postponing snapback,” Vaez said, referring to the prospect that the Europeans could take action at the UN Security Council later this summer that would find Iran in violation of a UN Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2016 Iran nuclear deal, and “snap back” international sanctions on Iran. Iran has vowed, were that to occur, that it would exit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
If the US and Iran are able to finalize the framework political deal, “they will go to the Security Council and they will try to get an extension of snapback to buy more time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement,” Vaez said. “Preferably, that would be attached to some practical steps,” such as the shipping out of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, or other confidence-building measures.
Trump was vague today about when he expected a deal with Iran might be reached. “Oh, I don't know,” he said. “I think over the next couple of weeks, if it happens.”
Positive “optics” of US Iran talks to date
Both Washington and Tehran have projected cautiously positive assessments of the talks to date, even as it is not clear how much progress on the nitty gritty technical details has been made, given the US side until recently was pretty thinly staffed, said Suzanne Maloney, Brookings Institution Vice President and a former State Department Iran advisor.
“What's striking to me is that the optics are all very positive from both sides,” Maloney said on a Carnegie Connects virtual event today. “US and Iranian negotiators are essentially trying to keep a sense of momentum, even if…it's unclear that there's been any serious discussion about the very deep and complicated technical issues that are going to have to be addressed if we're going to get to any kind of an agreement.”
“But I think that the optics are positive, and both sides trying to keep it positive says something good,” Maloney continued. “Because…I think we all recognize that there are no good solutions to Iran's nuclear ambitions other than some kind of a negotiated agreement.”
But there still could be a time crunch, said Vali Nasr, a professor at John Hopkins School of International Affairs (SAIS), former State Department advisor and author of the new book, Iran’s Grand Strategy.
“A negotiation process in which you meet for one day every week and there's no sustained discussion is not going to yield results in two months,” Nasr told the Carnegie Connects virtual panel today. “And so there is now more talk of coming up with an interim agreement that actually would create time.”
“There’s not an open ended time,” Nasr continued. “In fact, partly, the next rounds of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran might not be on the nuclear issue at all, but might be on how do they manage the next two, three months, [in order] that the schedule of things that could happen does not derail the talks… They need to find.. mechanisms about how they're going to manage that.”
Israel faces Trump red light for now
Israel is unlikely to target Iran while it has such an explicit red light from the United States, said former Israeli defense Iran analyst Danny Citrinowicz.
“I don't see that happening,” Citrinowicz, now a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program and fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said. “Even on the operational level, you need coordination work with [US] Centcom. But regardless, you are not attacking in Iran and starting a potential regional war with no US support.”
Watching Trump’s televised demeanor today as he seemed to relish saying he pressed Netanyahu not to take action on Iran while the negotiations with Iran are progressing, an Israeli media commentator expressed the sense that Netanyahu had met with undeniable diplomatic failure with the Trump administration.
“At the end of May 2025, Netanyahu has lost every opportunity he had with the Trump administration,” Ben Yaniv Falcon, chief international correspondent for pro-Netanyahu Israeli television channel 14, wrote on Twitter, above a clip of Trump’s comments (via translation). “Simply a resounding diplomatic failure. It was shouted during Trump’s visit to the Middle East and now it is screaming.”
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