U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed over striking Iran in a secret overnight phone call.
This happened hours after a failed plot to topple Tehran’s regime in the war’s opening days was exposed.
The ‘lengthy and dramatic’ call notes that Netanyahu increasingly doubts further negotiations with Tehran will yield a peace deal and wants to resume military strikes.
Trump, meanwhile, wants to push harder for an agreement in which Iran abandons its nuclear weapons program before any return to war.
The discussion came hours after the New York Times revealed that Israel, with Trump’s approval, went into the war with an ‘audacious’ plan to install hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s new leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes.
The plot collapsed on day one when Ahmadinejad was wounded by an Israeli strike on his Tehran home meant to free him from house arrest, and he hasn’t been seen since.
Ahmadinejad, who had fallen out with the Ayatollah, was known during his 2005 to 2013 presidency for calling to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’
He also backed Tehran’s nuclear program, and violently crushed civilian dissent.
‘The failed plans for Ahmadinejad just further proves that there is no good leader within the current ranks of their government. There is no Delcy Rodriguez in Iran,’ a US official involved in the US-Iran negotiations.
