Prospect of US-Iran talks puts Netanyahu under pressure

With mixed signals over US plans for fresh talks with Iran, the exchange of fire between Iran and Israel – the Middle East’s two arch-enemies – continues.

Iran fired several missiles at targets in northern and southern Israel overnight, after Israel carried out “dozens” of air strikes inside Iran on Monday, hitting command centres of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and Intelligence Ministry in Tehran, Israel’s army said, as well as weapons stores and air defences.

Around the latest blast site in northern Tel Aviv, balconies have been sheared off, and walls are shedding masonry into a crater between a cluster of residential buildings.

Local reports suggest this was a direct hit from an Iranian missile that narrowly missed several apartment blocks. Six people were reportedly wounded in the attack, though none seriously.

He described fleeing from his apartment in bare feet as glass shattered around him. When he looked back, a fire had already broken out in the debris behind him, he said.

There is still widespread speculation over Donald Trump’s motivation for opening a new dialogue with Tehran; negotiations have been used by the White House before as a smokescreen for military escalation, and thousands of US marines are currently being sent to the Middle East.

But to some in Israel, talk of negotiations is another indication that the US president is looking for a way out of the war, and that the goals of Israel and its superpower ally are starting to diverge.

“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu doesn’t want a deal,” says Michael Milstein, a former military intelligence officer in Israel and now head of the Palestinian Studies Centre at Tel Aviv University.

But Netanyahu is treading a fine line, after promising Israelis this war would end the immediate threat from Iran and its network of proxies around the region. The bar for a deal he can sell to Israeli voters and allies is high at this point in the war.