Global & US Headlines
Netanyahu’s D.C. lobbying blitz yields no U.S. pledge to widen Iran deal demands
After a closed-door 12 Feb 2026 White House meeting, President Trump said talks with Tehran will proceed on the nuclear file alone despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request to add missiles and proxies, while ordering the Pentagon to ready a second carrier for the Gulf.
Focusing Facts
- Trump told reporters on 12 Feb 2026 that “nothing definitive” was reached with Netanyahu but that U.S.–Iran negotiations launched in Oman last week “will continue.”
- U.S. officials confirmed the same day that a second aircraft-carrier strike group has been placed on 96-hour notice to join the USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran’s coast.
- Eight Arab and Muslim states—Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and the UAE—issued a rare joint statement this week condemning Israel’s new West Bank annexation measures.
Context
The spectacle echoes Netanyahu’s March 2015 address to the U.S. Congress, when he tried—unsuccessfully—to derail Obama’s JCPOA; then, as now, an Israeli premier sought to graft missile limits and regional militias onto a purely nuclear negotiation. Strategically, Washington’s move typifies a century-old pattern—going back to the 1920s “gunboat diplomacy” in the Caribbean—of coupling diplomacy with visible naval pressure, but today that coercive signal competes with the Navy’s overstretch in the Pacific, highlighting America’s gradual relative decline. On a hundred-year horizon the episode matters less for any single carrier deployment than for what it reveals: Israel and the United States now pursue diverging threat hierarchies (Iran as existential vs. tier-two), suggesting that the post-1967 automatic alignment may be loosening. Whether Trump ultimately cuts a narrow deal or bombs again, the underlying trend is toward transactional bargains rather than open-ended security guarantees—an evolution that could, decades hence, leave regional actors to balance each other without a permanent U.S. military umpire.
Perspectives
Progressive anti-war media
e.g., Mondoweiss, Democracy Now!, World Socialist — Netanyahu’s Washington trip shows he is trying to sabotage diplomacy and drag the U.S. into another catastrophic imperialist war against Iran. Their long-standing pro-Palestinian, anti-imperialist stance can lead them to underplay Iran’s repression and portray every U.S. or Israeli action as pretext for aggression.
Pro-Israel conservative media
e.g., Arutz Sheva, The Algemeiner, The Patriot Post — Trump and Netanyahu are rightly pressing Iran; firm threats or even force are necessary because Tehran’s missiles and terror proxies endanger Israel and regional stability. Close ideological alignment with Israeli government makes them amplify the Iranian threat and gloss over the humanitarian costs of another war or Palestinian concerns.
International mainstream outlets
e.g., Al Jazeera Online, The Japan Times — Washington is simultaneously massing military power and keeping diplomacy alive, leaving the region in limbo as talks with Tehran continue without concrete results. Reliance on official statements and a focus on geopolitical play-by-play may lead them to treat U.S. threats and Israeli pressure as neutral facts, muting deeper critique of power dynamics.