Josh Dawsey

He talks to...

Netanyahu more than he does any other world leader.

And that was sort of striking to us because in the fall and in the winter, the prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, was really using these phone calls, you know, to push for a more sustained conflict from the 12-day war that happened last year.

Netanyahu and his team came to the White House, and they all ended up down in a Situation Room where he was showing him Israeli intelligence.

There were top officials from the United States side and the Israeli side looking at this intelligence.

And the other folks in Trump's orbit, you know,

Secretary of State, various top aides were more skeptical of the Israeli plan and the Israeli intelligence than President Trump was.

And it was sort of a seminal moment in the lead up to this war.

Why?

He was a guy who ran in 2024 on no new wars.

He's sort of been against fraud intervention in a lot of ways.

And one of the things that came through in our conversations with our sources, Lindsey Graham and others told us that Netanyahu convinced the president

you know, that it would work well, that there would be the confidence of the U.S.

military, the confidence of the operation.

That meeting in the Situation Room, along with a number of other phone calls that Netanyahu had with Trump, I think helped, you know, push him over the edge to go forward in the war in Iran.

It was the apex of their relationship, right?

They were talking every day.

They were sharing notes.

They, I think, were both happy with how things were going in the early days and weeks of the war.

They were able to take out Iranians' top leadership pretty quickly.