From Gaza to Iran: What’s at stake in Trump-Netanyahu Mar-a-Lago talks?
President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on Monday afternoon, with talks expected to focus on renewed tensions with Iran and the possibility of advancing to additional stages of the Gaza peace plan.
Before meeting with the president, Netanyahu is slated to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday morning.
Dr. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told Fox News Digital that President Trump has likely been pressuring Netanyahu since the peace plan’s implementation, noting that the American leader has little patience for Middle Eastern timelines, which he said are far longer than those in the U.S. and the real estate sector.
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"The problem is that Hamas knows all it has to do is survive and continue controlling the western part of Gaza while attacking Israel, as it has been doing from Gaza’s tunnel network, in order to ratchet up tensions between Israel and the U.S.," Diker said.
Netanyahu’s mission during the visit, he continued, will be first to lay out Israel’s threat assessment regarding Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas as extremely serious, and to impress upon the president that Tehran is rebuilding its military capabilities. He is also likely to seek to persuade Trump to allow Israel to take the steps it deems necessary to defeat Hamas.
Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid told Fox News Digital that "We [Israel] should be coordinating with President Trump on all the major fronts, but the top priority has to be the management of stage two in Gaza."
Lapid added, "Israel needs to achieve the disarmament of Hamas and the removal of the threat from Gaza, and that requires the implementation of President Trump’s plan."
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During the meeting, Netanyahu will reportedly present Trump with plans for a potential strike on Iran. Israel has warned Washington that a recent Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps missile drill could be masking preparations for an attack, a concern that IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir conveyed to U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper during recent meetings in Tel Aviv.
In a Saturday interview reported by the country's media, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country is engaged in what he described as a "total war" with the U.S., Israel and Europe. The Times of Israel reported him saying, "In my opinion, we are at total war with the United States, Israel and Europe," Pezeshkian said. "They want to bring our country to its knees."
Axios reported that U.S. intelligence assesses there is no immediate threat, while Israeli defense officials say forces remain on heightened alert.
According to Dr. Meir Javedanfar, a lecturer on Iran and the Middle East at Reichman University, Netanyahu’s plan is expected to call for strikes on Iran’s missile program.
"Israel will probably hope that such a wide-scale attack would further undermine the legitimacy of Iran’s supreme leader, thereby creating greater political instability within the country. This is especially true given that after the recent war with Israel, Iran’s economy has deteriorated significantly, and the regime is not taking the necessary steps to address these problems," he said.
Israeli Minister for Settlement and National Missions Orit Strook stressed the importance of completing full Gaza demilitarization before moving forward with further stages of the plan.
She referenced Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset in October, noting that he highlighted his role in building international support for Gaza’s demilitarization and securing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the full dismantling of weapons, tunnels and terror infrastructure.
"Hamas wakes up every day with a mission to hurt us," Strook told Fox News Digital. "The IDF will not withdraw even one meter, and no rehabilitation framework will be established until full demilitarization is completed.
"If, God forbid, the opposite happens in the meeting, it will be a failure of the peace plan, a failure for Trump himself — who would be settling for fake demilitarization— and a failure for us. We will not be able to say that we won this war if Hamas remains armed," she added.
Trump is nevertheless expected to soon unveil the second stage of his Gaza framework, despite Hamas’s failure to return the remains of Israel Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, who was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, and whose body was taken to Gaza by Hamas terrorists.
Fox News Digital's Sophia Compton contributed to this report.