Trump claims that Israel never 'talked' him into launching a war on Iran / Reuters is reporting that Israeli and ‌Lebanese representatives will hold talks in Washington on Thursday. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, ‌the ⁠source told the news agency.

 

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/apr/20/iran-war-latest-news-updates-live-hormuz-trump-us-iranian-ship-ceasefire-doubt?page=with%3Ablock-69e623988f089b30862aef31#block-69e623988f089b30862aef31

 

Trump claims that Israel never 'talked' him into launching a war on Iran

In a new post anto Truth Social, Donald Trump has said that Israel never “talked” him into the war with Iran, after reports that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, put pressure on him into launching their joint assault on Iran in late February.

 

Justifying his military action, widely seen as being launched illegally, the US president claimed that the “results of Oct. 7th” added to his “lifelong opinion” that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.

 

As my colleague Julian Borger notes in this story, Trump has repeatedly claimed, since starting the war, that Iran had been two to four weeks from making a nuclear weapon and firing it at the US and Israel, a claim rejected as absurd by most experts.

 

Trump signed off his Truth Social post by saying if Iran’s new leaders are “smart” then the country can have a “great and prosperous” future.

 

He has previously said the US has been negotiating with figures inside of Iran other than the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has reportedly been recovering from severe facial and leg injuries suffered in the airstrike that killed his father at the beginning of the war.

 

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Reuters is reporting that Israeli and ‌Lebanese representatives will hold talks in Washington on Thursday. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, ‌the ⁠source told the news agency.

 

Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, has expressed optimism over future negotiations, which he hopes will bring an end to the war and achieve a complete Israeli withdrawal from the southern parts of his country.

 

Hezbollah, which operates independently of the Lebanese state, has said it opposes direct talks with Israel and its lawmakers have criticised the government for agreeing to hold such negotiations.

 

The Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, which came into effect on 16 April, is set to last ten days. In an outline issued by the US state department, it said both parties, having met for face-to-face talks in Washington last week, “affirm that the two countries are not at war and commit to engaging in good-faith direct negotiations, facilitated by the United States”.

 

The ceasefire is described as “a gesture of goodwill by the government of Israel, intended to enable good-faith negotiations toward a permanent security and peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon”.

 

However, it reiterates Israel’s right “to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks”.

 

Crucially though, the 10-day ceasefire agreement does not demand Israel withdraw soldiers occupying parts of southern Lebanon, where Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said Israeli troops would continue to demolish homes he claimed, without evidence, were being used by Hezbollah.

 

Israel on Monday told residents of south Lebanon to stay out of a belt of territory running the length of the border and not to approach the area of the Litani river, about 30km from the border with Israel.