WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not push any one particular strategy regarding Iran during his Oval Office meeting with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, according to a senior Israeli official, who characterized the sit-down as an “exchange of ideas” regarding the three main scenarios before them.

The first scenario would be a diplomatic agreement with Iran. The second would be a murkier scenario where there is no deal but the US continues trying to pressure Iran through economic sanctions and a blockade of its ports. The third option is to launch a major new offensive against the Islamic Republic, the senior Israeli official explained during a briefing Wednesday with Israeli reporters in Washington.

“We talked about each of these options extensively and honestly — not in an attempt to promote one over the other, but to really examine which might lead to the most desirable outcome,” the senior Israeli official said.

The official sought to dispel the notion that Netanyahu visited Washington to convince Trump to resume strikes against Iran, as was widely reported to have been the case during his last trip in February, when weeks before the start of the war he made a high-stakes case in the Situation Room for why the US should join Israel in striking Iran.

Trump got on board with that plan, but many of the predictions Netanyahu made at the time about how smoothly the campaign would go did not pan out. The US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding last month meant to halt the war, but the MOU largely focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, rather than any concrete concessions from Iran pertaining to its nuclear program, which has been the major point of contention in recent decades between Iran and the US.

That MOU has since unravelled due to continued disagreements over Hormuz and Trump is once again considering a major US attack against Iran.

This time around, Netanyahu did not tell Trump which of the three scenarios he preferred, although the premier did acknowledge doubts regarding the possibility that Iran will uphold any agreement it signs, the senior Israeli official said.

Regardless, the two leaders discussed all three scenarios in detail, laying out the advantages and disadvantages of each in achieving their mutual goal of preventing a nuclear Iran, the senior Israeli official recalled.

While the official acknowledged that the final decision on how to proceed is Trump’s, he said Netanyahu would not wait for an American green light if Iran decides to attack Israel first.

The official suspected that Iran has refrained from doing so to date because it knows that the Israeli response would be overwhelming and because Jerusalem has achieved a degree of deterrence against Tehran.

Upping economic pressure on a weakened regime

During the Tuesday meeting, Trump expressed concern over the war’s impact on energy markets and the global economy, the senior Israeli official said, adding that Netanyahu recognized that addressing those issues can be at odds with squeezing Iran.

Iran’s obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz, a key pathway for the global supply of oil and gas, has sent energy prices soaring shortly before the US midterm elections in November.

However, Netanyahu maintained that the Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s last remaining point of leverage and that the US should not allow Tehran to exploit it to secure concessions from Washington.

The prime minister insisted to Trump that it was still possible to further intensify economic pressure against Iran without bringing down the global economy, the official said.

The two leaders “discussed (during their Tuesday meeting) additional economic pressure (against Iran) through kinetic and non-kinetic means,” the senior Israeli official said.

The official claimed that while Iran appears to have withstood the worst of what the US and Israel were able to throw at it over the last four months, the regime is now much weaker than it seems and is facing unprecedented economic turmoil and even a renewal of small protests against it.

“The regime is very afraid of the possibility that the public will take to the streets over the economic situation,” the official added, pointing to what he said is a 90% inflation rate in Iran. Economic crisis in Iran earlier this year led to mass protests and a bloody regime crackdown in the leadup to the war.

Regime change seen as unrealistic

While Netanyahu in the early days of the war spoke about regime change as a very realistic possibility, the senior Israeli official appeared to acknowledge that it would not happen organically under the current conditions, in which protesters are not armed.

The official pointed to Iran’s recent executions of dissidents, arguing that they demonstrated........

© The Times of Israel