Netanyahu on mission to the White House

When Benjamin Betanyahu jumps on the first available plane to Washington to see Donald Trump, you know he is very anxious about something. The Israeli prime minister clearly took fright when Trump said the first round of new talks with Iran had gone very well. He coild see the unpredictable US president suddenly doing a deal which would, in Israeli eyes, be half-cocked. Netanyahu desperately wants Trump to stick to his principles which would mean the president refusing to concede on any of his objectives vis a vis Tehran: scrapping the nuke programme, handing over all highly enriched uranium, reducing hugely the ballistic-missile programme and axeing all links to the proxy militia scattered throughout the Middle East. Trump shouldn't need to be persuaded because when he decided in his first term of office to take the US out of the Obama-brokered nuclear deal with Tehran, he said it was becausee the deal was terrible, didn't limit the nukes programme sufficiently and didn't include any restrictions on ballistic missiles or those proxy forces working their evil on behalf of Tehran. So, if that was his feeling in his first term, Netanyahu wants to make sure Trump still abides by those red lines. The reference to how good the talks were in Muscat, Oman, last week upset Netanyahu because the Iranian negotiator, the foreign minister, said all he wanted to talk about was nukes. Netanyahu has a point. Trump gets carried away with these high-profile talks and seems to be optimistic that a deal can be done. Despite sending a massive armada of warships to threaten Iran, Trump has been very open that he doesn't want a war. So the talks are absolutely key. Netanyahu will try to persuade Trump that now is the time to drive the hardest bargain and get those ballistic missiles which threaten Israel more than anywhere else, must be curtailed. BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER. AMAZON, WATERSTONES, ROWANVALE BOOKS.