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he's got some concerns that aren't necessarily Trump's concerns. And you see this divergence right now.
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President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the war with Iran together, but they have very different ideas about how to end it. How is that straining their relationship? This is SOURCES and METHODS from npr. I'm Scott Detrow in for Mary Louise Kelly. It is Thursday, which means we are diving into the week's biggest national security stories with NPR reporters who are out there covering them. Joining me here in the studio is White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Hey, Franco.
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Hey, Scott.
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And from Tel Aviv, where by the looks of things, he's in a much sunnier place than we are, is national security correspondent Greg Myre. Hey, Greg.
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Lots of sun and very warm. Hey, Scott.
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All right. So always good to timestamp this conversation, especially given all of the news we've been talking about the last few weeks. It's about noon here in D.C. 7pm for you in Tel Aviv, Greg. And we are going to talk because this week Washington and Tel Aviv are on shaky grounds, tied, of course, to the war with Iran. Franco, I want to start with a phone call that made a lot of news this week.
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Yeah. Trump had a phone call with the prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu of Israel. And Trump at first called the call a productive call where he told Netanyahu to basically pull away from the attacks, planned attacks and some attacks on Lebanon. There's always been some strikes. Recently, Trump wanted to stop those because the concern was that it was messing up or having a negative impact on talks with Iran. Well, that so called productive call later emerged that it was not so nice, at least not a nice call, and that Trump actually called Netanyahu crazy, dropped a bunch of F bombs, And Trump actually confirmed this a few days later on a podcast called Pod Force One.
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I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon. You know, at some point I said maybe we got to stop this, we got to stop it.
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Greg, what's the reaction been in Israel?
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Yeah, the reaction here was Netanyahu needs to stand up to Trump. And so, Scott, it's always very interesting that, you know, in the US you hear how Israel may be influencing US Policy in the Middle east and pushing a president to take a certain position. You hear the exact opposite here. Israelis say that they get pushed around by the president. And they say, for example, this is the fourth time in the past year that Trump has stopped Israel from carrying out a military operation. They point to Iran last summer in the 12 Day War, when Trump decided to call it off. When Trump more or less pushed a ceasefire in Gaza last October, the war in Iran, Trump made the decision of when to stop it in April. And now with Lebanon. Israel had been engaged in this major offensive in southern Lebanon, and Netanyahu wanted to escalate further with airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. But then Iran said, well, we're not, we're going to stop negotiating with the US So that really caught Trump's attention. He jumped in, got Netanyahu on the phone, and that potential airstrike got called off.
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And the disagreements between them matters because it's always going to matter given how much military action is at play. But this is a really important period of time and a tense period of time because it is clear that even though they started this war together, they have very different ideas of how to end it. Walk us through how Trump is thinking about this, how that contrasts with how Netanyahu is thinking about this.
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Yeah, I mean, I think they did start with this notion of, broadly, we want to topple the Islamic regime in Tehran, we want to destroy their nuclear program. But then as it's moved on, those things haven't happened, number one. But as you get down to some of the details, they have differed. Trump seems very interested in making some sort of deal right now that he doesn't really seem to want to keep pressing the military campaign. Netanyahu clearly does. I mean, he said it outright for quite some time. He doesn't believe that you can really negotiate with Iran, that they won't abide by a deal and the US And Israel should keep attacking and damage the regime as much as they can. Also, Iran's missile program is of huge concern to Israel because it's getting hit or was getting hit during the fighting by those Iranian missiles. So that is a very urgent, pressing matter for Netanyahu, who's also probably facing an election in September or October. So he's got some concerns that aren't necessarily Trump's concerns. And you see this divergence right now.
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And Franco, let's put this in a little bit more of context, because this is not the first time that Trump and Netanyahu have really seen things wildly differently or had tense interactions. I mean, Trump got very frustrated and upset at reporting and insinuations and even comments from top level officials that indicated that Trump and the United States followed Israel, Netanyahu's lead into this war.
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Yeah, I mean, this is really nothing new. I mean, the friction has been there for a while, I will say. You know, like in the first Trump one, the first Trump administration, they were kind of characterized as like these best buddies that, you know, had kind of an inseparable bond. But you did start to see clear divisions. Trump sometimes not feeling like Netanyahu had enough support. And then, of course, the big moment was when Netanyahu kind of called and congratulated Biden after the 2020 election, which Trump saw as kind of disloyal considering he was denying the election results.
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Right. Netanyahu was acknowledging the reality of Biden winning the election and being on track to be the next president.
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Absolutely. And that kind of continued for a while, even up to the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel. Trump actually lashed out at Netanyahu about those attacks and even gave Lebanon some credit for such a sneak attack. So these are tensions that have been going on for a while. Of course, they kind of made nice again before this administration. And Trump is clearly been backing Netanyahu in so many different ways on expanding settlements, the war in Gaza, now, of course, Iran as well. But we've seen some of these frictions. Not only concerns about attacks on Lebanon. He had similar concerns when Netanyahu authorized attacks on a Hamas leader during the war in Gaza.
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I want both of your takes on this. And Greg, I'm going to start with you. Does Trump and does the US Need Netanyahu in Israel to end this war? Could Trump just say the US Is done?
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Well, Trump could do that. And in some sense he did that with the ceasefire. Just that. Okay, that's enough for now. And Trump could make a deal. Israel feels it's not being included in these negotiations, so they do feel they're being left out. Now, to the question, does the US Need Israel? Well, yes, it does need it, in the sense that Netanyahu can undermine things, as we've just seen this week in Lebanon, if he pursues an aggressive campaign in Lebanon, that could lead the Iranians to say, no deal. It's a ceasefire, it's a peace agreement in both places. And even there's a school of thought that The Iranians are testing Trump to see if he can keep Netanyahu in line when it comes to Lebanon. So before they make a deal with the Americans, they want to make sure Trump is on board and that Trump and Netanyahu, if they, if the Americans promise something that it will be delivered and then Netanyahu won't undermine it. And again, you just have these very close security arrangements that date back for decades. So even beyond the specifics of whatever does or doesn't happen in Iran, there's all sorts of interrelated actions that have been taking place here. You know, you just think of the way Trump has talked so much about the Abraham Accords, which is really Israel's relationship with other countries in the region. So there's a lot of overlap and intermingling here. And so, yes, I think that Israel plays a role in ending the war. But going forward, the US And Israel still going to be very closely tied throughout the region.
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I mean, I agree, absolutely. I mean, I do think that Trump and the White House need Netanyahu. They need Israel to have a lasting deal if this is going to be a durable agreement that can last for a long time. The issue with Trump, as we've reported many times, though, is that he will announce a deal about peace when peace has not necessarily really been completed, that peace is not actually there. You can refer to some of the other peace agreements that he has announced where they're continued to be fighting. You can look at Gaza as well. I mean, he got Netanyahu to kind of stop the fighting, but fighting continues in Gaza. There were just some strikes, nine people reportedly killed in the last few days. So if it's going to be a durable deal, yes, Trump needs Netanyahu, but he can announce a deal with kind of tentative agreement from Netanyahu. It can be temporary. And I think that's the real question is kind of Greg's alluding to. It's like what is the lasting durable agreement that we're going to have here?
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All right. We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will have a BROADER look at U.S. israel relations. That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR.
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This message comes from ixl. IXL is designed to help students strengthen core skills and build confidence before the new school year begins. The adaptive platform provides personalized learning for Pre K through 12th grade and is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the United States. One hour of tutoring can cost more than an Entire month of IXL receive an exclusive 20% discount on an IXL membership@ixl.com NPR this message comes from Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This message comes from Prolon. Want to look and feel your best this spring? Prolon's five Day Fasting Mimicking Diet is a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it aims to assist the body in entering a fasting like state that helps reset metabolism, target visceral fat and support healthy metabolic markers. Get 15% off plus a bonus gift when you subscribe@prolonlife.com NPR we are back.
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And Franco, one thing that interests me is we are at this point where Trump is frustrated with Netanyahu. Trump has done so much for Netanyahu that Netanyahu has pushed the US Government to do for decades, among them moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, inviting him repeatedly to DC Lobbying other officials in Israel to pardon him, you know, entering into a war with him. Has Trump gotten anything in return from all of that?
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Yeah. I mean, look, support for Israel is very big in American politics. It's particularly big in the GOP among the Republican Party, and it's even bigger among white Christian evangelicals. And this is a massive or a very big part of Trump's base. So clearly, this is a very important constituency that Trump is speaking to. He's always speaking to his base. He always puts them first in most political decisions. But I will say some of those dynamics are changing, particularly among young voters and more populist voters who are growing weary of all this foreign intervention. And you're starting to see that.
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So Tucker Carlson, wing of the Tucker
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Carlson, the Marjorie Taylor Green wing, but kind of a broader swath of Americans, too. I mean, I was actually talking with Aaron David Miller, who served vice presidents in both Democratic and Republican administrations. This is how he kind of described it to me.
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You have an American public that no
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longer sees Israel as David Israel is now Goliath.
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And as a consequence of that, that gives Trump a degree of room to maneuver with, admittedly the most right wing government in Israel's history.
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Greg, as we zoom out on the context, I had a question for you. But first, how many wars have you covered from Tel Aviv at this point
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in time like, do you, we could probably say this is the fourth Israel Hezbollah war I've covered. I covered 1996 from Lebanon, 2006 from Israel, the one a couple years ago, and now this one. So the fourth one just between these combatants.
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Over that period of time where you have had this front row seat, what's the best way to think about how the relationship between the US And Israel has changed?
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Yeah, so it's, it's been a close relationship on many levels, particularly the military level, but it does have these, these real moments of tension that we've seen this week. This is, is by no means unprecedented. I'm thinking back in the early 1990s when Jim Baker was Secretary of State, very frustrated with the Israelis. He was testifying before Congress and he really just sort of snapped. And he said, when the Israelis are ready for peace, they can call me at this number. And then he read out the White House number, you know, at a congressional hearing, everybody over there should know that
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the Telephone number is 1-202-456144.
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When you're serious about peace, call us. We've seen Netanyahu frustrate almost every president, certainly the Democratic presidents, with his resistance or outright refusal to engage in negotiations or serious negotiations with the Palestinians. That includes Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Barack Obama during his terms, Joe Biden as well. But even with, say, Obama, he put together the last military assistance deal for Israel, 10 years, almost $40 billion, so close to $4 billion a year. And that assistance program runs through 2028. That has never been really an issue of renewing that. In fact, it just kind of gets bigger every time it comes up for renewal. But it might be a different story in 2028, which would not only that would be a presidential election year to see how both parties, but Democrats in particular, might feel about voting for a large military aid package to Israel.
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We're going to come back to that point in a moment. But first, I know that you recently interviewed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. What did he have to say about the current wars?
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Yeah, so, you know, I wanted to talk to him because he was the prime minister in two who pulled Israel out of south Lebanon after an 18 year occupation. And at that point, I had just arrived in Israel, and so I was covering that myself. And he said that he had been thinking about this for 15 years, since the mid-1980s. You know, I sometimes asked, why did you pull out the soldier from this security zone in 2000? I said, the right question is not why I did it in 2000. Why it was not done 15 years earlier? Because for me, it was a stretched tragedy that has no explanation in a rational way. Yeah. So as Barack was saying, he had thought a long, long and hard, even when he was a soldier, about pulling out of Lebanon. He said even in the mid-1980s, when he was dealing with the Reagan administration, when he was an intelligence officer in Israel, he wanted to get out of south Lebanon. So by the time he came into office in 1999, he knew it was something he wanted to do. He knew he'd take a lot of criticism for it. There were Israelis out in the streets demanding that the troops come home and others. He said that's only going to encourage Hezbollah and that they will continue to fight. And that indeed has been the case. But he said it was still the right thing to do. Now, he said he would even support some limited actions in Lebanon now because Israel needs to protect its communities in the north, but it shouldn't be a long term thing. He thinks there are opportunities to work with the Lebanese government and others in the region to curb Hezbollah and that that's the way it should be approached, that Israel is never going to completely eradicate Hezbollah.
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Franco, when it comes to shifting public opinion on Israeli policy and how much that's really started to reshape American politics, the ultimate leverage that President Trump has over Prime Minister Netanyahu is, as we were talking before, American military aid to Israel. That has always been such a political live wire when other presidents have hinted at possib, restricting it or pausing it. President Biden never ultimately did that, but certainly got a lot of criticism when it would come up as a proposal. What is stopping Trump from potentially, at some point, if he can't get Israel on the same page about Iran from making that same threat?
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I think part of it is the same political components that we were talking about before and the need for the support. This administration or the Republican Party still largely supports Israel in many of these different ways. We talked about the white evangelical Christians, and I think it would be a pretty big break for Trump to kind of pull that away and to pull that support or even threaten that kind of support. Now, I do think it could become a debate issue. Certainly can see some Democrats, even some more populist conservatives, kind of raising that point. But I don't think that Trump is there or even anywhere near there to kind of make that kind of threat yet. I think it would actually kind of demonstrate that he doesn't have as much power over Netanyahu. That he says he does. I mean, it was just a couple weeks ago where Trump said that Netanyahu will do whatever I tell him to do.
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Yeah. To that end, Greg, earlier we talked about does the US Need Israel on board to end the war with Iran? Let's get to the flip side of that question. Does Israel need US Support to continue its military actions in Lebanon or Iran?
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Oh, absolutely, particularly if it were to be in Iran. Israel depends on US Defensive systems to shoot down missiles, perhaps even drones. So that that piece of it is very critical. Israel could still conduct its operations in Lebanon to some extent the way it has in Gaza, at least in the short term. But Scott, if Israel is bombing Lebanon, they're doing it with American made planes like F16s and F35s. They're using American weapons that have been provided by the American taxpayer. So certainly in the longer term, to keep up any sustained operations, Israel is heavily dependent on U.S. weapons and military assistance.
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We're going to take one more break, but first, a quick plug for not one, but two other episodes from earlier this week that you may have missed, one with former Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. He spoke to Mayor Louise Kelly about his critique of the Iran war, which he calls a net loss for the Trump administration, and a second episode with reporter Yegana Torbati about what life is really like inside Iran. Those episodes go into our archive after a few weeks if you are not an NPR supporter. So make sure to check them out now. When we come back, where the elusive Iran deal stands. Plus, osint, our open source intelligence that is ahead on Sources and methods from npr.
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This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. Carvana believes selling your car should be refreshingly simple. Enter your license plate or vin, get a real offer down to the penny and schedule a pickup on your time. No surprises. Sell your car today@carvana.com Pickup fees may apply. We are back with Greg Myri and Franco Ordonez. Greg, it's been a week since we got into this in detail. Where do things stand in Iran? The state of negotiations there to formally end this conflict.
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Well, I can give you a one word answer, Scott stalled. We're just not seeing any momentum where you're hearing, well, they might trade more messages. There might be some more back and forth, and I certainly suspect that will happen. But there just doesn't feel like there's any momentum. I mean, if there was a silver lining this week, it was that at the beginning of the week, Israel was threatening to bomb Lebanon Hezbollah offices in the southern suburbs of Beirut. And it looked like we were headed for a major escalation. Israel and the Lebanese government agreed to a ceasefire or renew a ceasefire that had collapsed. They met at the State Department yesterday. So that offers some optimism, but we really need to treat it with a lot of skepticism. We're seeing some of the issues pop up already. Israel says it's remaining in south Lebanon with its forces and that the deal calls for Hezbollah to stop shooting and to pull back. And Hezbollah says it's not going to do that until the Israeli troops leave south Lebanon. So already we're back in this sort of circular game of no, you go first, I'll go after you go. And there has been more shooting reported in the last 24 hours or so, so we'll see if that sticks. But we've already seen a couple of those ceasefires collapse. It would remove an obstacle for the Iran negotiations, though, if it does stick.
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And Franco Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a series of marathon hearings on Capitol Hill this week, talking to both the House of the Senate. Anything revealing?
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Yeah, this was his first time on the Hill since the beginning of the war, and he actually gave some more specifics about the administration's negotiating position, at least on the record, talking about the need to reopen the strait, as well as to ensure that talks about the nuclear program go on, at least perhaps later on. What I found very interesting, though, is one of the complaints that this administration has given about the challenges of dealing with with the Iranians is that the government is fractured, that there are so many different factions. One has one position, the leadership has another position. The Revolutionary Guard has one position, other leaders have another. Well, Rubio said that there's indications that the new ayatollah has actually started to take a more active role in these talks.
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I think there are indications out there that he is increasingly engaging at some level, although all of his communications have
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been in writing and through intermediaries. So that would be potentially a very big deal. We have not heard from him, seen him or any indication of him since his father was killed. In the initial strikes. So if he is getting involved and there is a little bit more of a leadership kind of push, that could change the dynamics.
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Potentially interesting. So with that, but as always, we will end the podcast with Osint Open Source Intelligence, the not so secret but telling details we have stumbled across in our reporting. Greg, why don't you start us off?
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Yeah. I'm going to go back to the meeting I had today with Ehud Barak, the prime minister, back in the from 99 to 2001. I had just arrived in Israel at that time and Barack had just come into office and he was promising to make all these major moves and basically pull all the Israeli troops home from abroad. He did pull the troops back from Lebanon. He tried to negotiate a deal between Israel and Syria, where Israel has had troops in the Golan Heights since 1967. That didn't quite work out. So nothing happened on that front. And then he tried to negotiate a deal with the Palestinians. He spent two weeks at Camp David along with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the summer of 2000. They came, they came close to a deal. They didn't get there. And, you know, seeing him today and talking to him about those times, I mean, boy, you just kind of wish you had a time machine and you could go back to 2000 and say to everybody, guys, you know, do you want to know what it's going to look like in 2026? You might want to grab these opportunities while you can. As we see today, the disaster zone of Gaza, Israeli troops back in South Lebanon, and Israeli troops still in Syria.
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Interesting. Franco, what about you?
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I'm going to head over to Latin America, South America. In fact, in Venezuela, there are some appear to be some fractures in kind of the coalition of the government that has, you know, is now in charge since the US Kind of captured Nicolas Maduro, the former president of Venezuela. And there are concerns about Delsey Rodriguez, who is now the acting president or who took over for Maduro, among some of kind of like the Maduro loyalists, some kind of very prominent veterans of the party who have kind of been part of the media apparatus have been starting to speak out and kind of describing Rodriguez as a puppet who's doing whatever this White House wants, whatever Trump wants. Which by the way, is also what basically Trump is saying that Elsie Rodriguez and Venezuela will do whatever he wants. But it is, you know, creating this kind of an identity crisis in Venezuela of the government that I think will be very interesting to watch because if they can't hold it together, you could have some challenges there.
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Right. And there's no clear path what would happen next.
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Absolutely not.
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So I will go last. One of the stories I was covering a lot this week on All Things Considered was the turmoil at 60 minutes. And I interviewed Steve Krofft yesterday, longtime correspondent at 60 Minutes. And after the interview, I went back and rewatched for the first time in a very, very, very long time the interview that he did with Barack Obama 15 years ago now, which is wild, after the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. And I will say that if you are the type of person who is listening a half hour into a national security podcast, it is worth revisiting that interview because it is so interesting. As a reporter, I just was appreciating the amount of detail that Steve Kroft was able to get out of Obama with just very short, precise questions and just more and more questions like they're like three words at a time and Obama just shares so much information. And then also just like the level of detail about the spy work and the planning that went into that operation and the way that Obama was head faking everybody with all the public events he did that weekend, it was just, it was the biggest story in the world for so long. But so much time has passed. It was interesting to just go back and sit in that moment again.
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Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating how things have changed so much at CBS at 60 minutes, particularly with 60 minutes in these
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days and in the White House, too.
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Absolutely.
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It's a long time from 2011. I have been speaking with NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre and NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Thanks as always to both of you.
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Thank you, Scott.
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Sure.
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Thanks, Scott. My pleasure.
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Before we go, this podcast is one tool in your arsenal for staying on top of the news. And NPR newsletters should be another. You can get NPR journalism tailored to your interests right in your inbox. There are a lot to choose from. One that we would recommend is NPR's weekly Politics newsletter with all of the latest news and analysis from Franco and the rest of the political team. You can check out the full lineup@npr.org newsletters. That is it for today's episode. Thank you for listening. I'm Scott Detrow. We will be back next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from npr.
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