Trapping Trump into an Iran strike? Netanyahu will deny an Iran deal its ‘kosher certificate’ if Iran’s missiles are omitted

Alastair Crooke, 7 February 2026

Netanyahu and his adherents see his Israeli hegemonic strategy to be in the process of ‘blowing up’: The state is falling into internal crisis, and he, like Trump, is getting desperate. He needs Trump not to just bomb Iran, but to remove it entirely from the strategic board through a bombing campaign in order to maintain the thrust behind the Greater Israel domination project.

To this end, Netanyahu has contrived the framework to an Iran trap for Trump — one consisting of the inversion of the nuclear issue as the main priority to be replaced by Iranian missiles as now being Israel’s primordial and existential threat. This was the message that Netanyahu delivered to Trump at Mar-a-Lago on 28 December 2025.

Israeli press reports are adamant that Trump at the Mar-a-Lago summit gave a ‘green light’ for a strike on Iran, led by the US. This is Israel’s narrative — but has not been confirmed by US sources.

The December 2025 summit resulted in the US engaging in the attempt to impose yet another deception on Iran in order to provide spurious validation for a major air and missile attack on Iran. Spurious -- as the US has known since the 2010 talks led by Iran’s negotiator at the time, Saeed Jalili, that Iran insists that its missile defence is non-negotiable (as one would expect of any sovereign nation).

Iran has made clear over the months since Trump launched the June 2025 attacks on its nuclear sites — which Trump proclaims “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities — that whilst Iran remains open to diplomacy on the technical conduct of its nuclear programme, Iran’s rights under the NPT — to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes — are not up for negotiation.

Last week, the US proposed another round of nuclear negotiations with Iran (Witkoff confirmed that the talks would be on nuclear issues only) as a backdrop to the dispatch by the US of a naval armada to the Persian Gulf and a build-up of munitions — in the pattern of the Venezuela naval blockade. Iran agreed to talks, but refused to conduct them under military threat.

The US did accede to Iran’s demands that the talks be held in Muscat and be limited to the nuclear file.

However, Marco Rubio then suddenly demanded that Iran limit the range of its ballistic missiles, “end” its nuclear program, and terminate its support for its regional allies.