President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held their first face-to-face meeting since the United States and Israel opened the Iran war in February. Netanyahu described the White House meeting as excellent after the first direct talks between the two leaders since their governments launched joint military operations against Iran on February 28. An Israeli official briefed on the session said Netanyahu told Trump that Israel would respond to any Iranian attack on Israel but would otherwise trust the president's judgment on the next steps.
The meeting occurred while Washington was testing a pause in direct strikes and regional mediators were trying to move the United States and Iran back toward negotiations. Trump had directed the U.S. military not to conduct new strikes in Iran on Friday after 13 consecutive days of attacks, according to Axios reporting based on two sources familiar with the order.
Neither government released a joint military plan, a new ceasefire text or agreed restrictions on Israeli operations before the edition cutoff. The leaders also discussed regional security and political coordination while Netanyahu faced an Israeli election scheduled for October.
Israel joined the opening attack on Iran but was less central to the latest U.S. campaign tied to shipping and attacks on American forces around the Strait of Hormuz. Previous pauses have broken after disputed attacks, and Israel, Iran, the United States and aligned armed groups do not share a single published command or enforcement mechanism.
Public readouts establish what governments choose to disclose; they do not independently reveal classified targeting decisions, intelligence assessments or private conditions. As of the edition cutoff, The private commitments, disagreements and any classified operational instructions from the meeting were not public. The available reports distinguish measurements and attributed claims from conclusions that had not yet been established. Where officials supplied numbers, those figures remain subject to revision as agencies reconcile records and publish later updates. Subsequent records may therefore change the totals without changing the initial chronology. The next factual records to examine are Israeli military posture after the renewed Iranian missile attack and a detailed U.S. or Israeli readout defining conditions for further strikes.