White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Donald Trump concluded meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“President Trump has concluded his meetings in the Oval Office with President Zelensky and Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Leavitt wrote on X Tuesday. “Both meetings were positive and productive!”
Zelensky and Netanyahu traveled to the US to attend Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral, and then met with Trump at the White House.
Both leaders were expected to lobby Trump to increase support for their respective wars. According to Israel’s Channel 12 News, Netanyahu plans to make the case to Trump that Iran is racing for a nuclear weapon. Tel Aviv has long sought to convince Washington that war against Iran is necessary as Tehran is attempting to make a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu will present the intelligence following Trump’s decision not to significantly escalate the war against Iran over the weekend. Channel 12 reported that the IDF was anticipating a significant attack on Iran Saturday, but Trump was convinced by his top aides to give more time for negotiations to progress.
However, an Israeli official told the outlet that Tel Aviv negotiations are unlikely to lead to an agreement and the war will escalate. “The chances of reaching an agreement between the United States and Iran are virtually nonexistent,” a senior Israeli source said, adding that an eventual escalation in the conflict is “inevitable.”
Following his meeting with Trump, Zelensky said the two leaders discussed the procurement of Patriot missiles. “The President and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” he wrote on X following the meeting. “We also spoke about diplomacy – it’s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated.”
Earlier this month, Trump met with Zelensky at a NATO summit in Turkey and gave Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missiles. Patriots are the most advanced anti-missile systems in the Ukrainian arsenal.
