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Saudi, Israeli leaders try to shape Trump’s decisions on Iran conflict

▶ Watch Video: Netanyahu says he defers to Trump on Iran war expansion but differences may remain

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu estimated the intense part of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran would last four to six weeks. It is now entering the sixth month without a decisive military victory or a diplomatic breakthrough. 

Now, as Mr. Trump weighs his next steps and the future of roughly 50,000 U.S. troops across the Middle East, two of Washington’s closest regional partners are pressing the president with sharply different visions for how the conflict should proceed. 

The president received input Wednesday from his partner in this war, Netanyahu, as well as from Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman.

During his Tuesday Oval Office meeting with Netanyahu, Israeli officials were struck by Mr. Trump’s serious and “very clinical” approach to the Iran war. A senior Israeli official shared with CBS News that Netanyahu counseled the president on three options for the war: First, an enforceable deal focused on removal of the nuclear material; second, a blockade with added economic pressure; and a third involving military strikes particularly focused on attacking land routes used for transporting supplies.

Tension with Israel spilled into public view last month when conservative members of the Netanyahu coalition criticized the JD Vance-led diplomatic deal with Iran, and Vance told an interviewer that a country of nine million people should not think it can bomb itself out of every national security threat. Trump himself voiced frustration that Netanyahu needed to take a ‘softer touch’ in dealing with Iranian proxy group Hezbollah.

The official acknowledged Netanyahu is now sensitive to being seen as pushing Mr. Trump in any direction regarding the war and described the dynamic of their relationship as one where Mr. Trump is the senior partner and Israel is the junior.  Neither the White House nor the Israelis have released a readout of that meeting.

Speaking to reporters a day after the Oval Office meeting, a senior Israeli official defended Netanyahu’s original estimate to Mr. Trump of a war that would last just four to six weeks — one that the president publicly repeated at the outset of the conflict — by saying that the “tense part” was only four to six weeks long. Since U.S. combat resumed this month, Israel has stood on the sidelines, neither striking Iran nor having been attacked by it. The senior Israeli official told CBS News that if attacked, Israel would have no choice but to rejoin military operations.

Netanyahu held a follow-up meeting Wednesday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Defense Under Secretary for Policy Elbridge Colby, and met privately with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff. He also visited with senators known to be Iran hawks, Republicans Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Tim Sheehy and Democrat John Fetterman. 

In separate meetings with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance Wednesday, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman conveyed the Kingdom’s assessment that Iran is trying to find leverage in the conflict through escalation, and its main leverage points are through proxy forces in Yemen, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias. The White House acknowledged that Mr. Trump “had a brief drop-by meeting with the Saudi defense minister.”

The Saudis joined the United States in strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on Wednesday and bombed Houthis days earlier, in the first public engagement of any Persian Gulf nation during the war. The Kingdom described the strikes as defensive actions in response to a series of attacks on Saudi civilian infrastructure.  At least 20 people, including some Iranian military advisers, were killed in the Saudi-U.S. strikes, according to the Iran-backed militia groups.

Saudi Arabia’s leaders are trying to avoid further regional escalation that would risk miscalculation or prolonging of the war. A person familiar with the Saudis’ thinking told CBS News that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his brother Khalid bin Salman have been concerned that Netanyahu, who launched the war in February alongside the U.S., is pushing for further escalation. 

Prince Khalid was originally supposed to visit Washington last week but was delayed due to recent strikes, according to a person with knowledge of his plans.

The Kingdom struck the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen last week after militants fired missiles at a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea, after declaring a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia. CBS News tracked at least five vessels early last week, including several laden with Saudi crude oil, making U-turns before reaching the Bab el-Mandeb Strait soon after the Houthis had vowed to block Saudi-linked ships.

In the meantime, diplomacy with Iran remains unproductive. Iran rejected an initial proposal from Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Witkoff and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as Vance, had thought they had negotiated a diplomatic agreement to do so, which was announced in late June as a memorandum of understanding. That truce lasted less than three weeks.

Pressed by reporters as to whether Israel has determined there is anyone worth negotiating with in Iran, a senior Israeli official offered only one name — Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi — and characterized him as a realist, but not a moderate. The senior Israeli official acknowledged that economic sanctions and blockades could be effective in persuading more pragmatic Iranian officials to pursue diplomacy. 

Netanyahu still believes that regime change is necessary and hopes to achieve that goal by laying the groundwork for an uprising. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he favors negotiating with the regime, which would arguably extend a lifeline to those the Israelis hope to extract.

U.S. intelligence assesses that further bombing of Iran will not dislodge the IRGC controlled regime, two U.S. officials said. 

The United Arab Emirates had also carried out dozens of airstrikes in Iran this spring but has not publicly advertised it. Gulf allies who house U.S. troops, including Kuwait and Bahrain, have fielded near daily incoming drones and missiles, some of them launched from Iran and some from Iraqi territory. Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S. Sheikha al Zain al Sabah issued an on the record denial that the country had participated in strikes on Iran after the Wall Street Journal reported it last week.

The Strait of Hormuz remains congested by Iranian threats, and Iran’s enriched nuclear material remains under Iranian control — albeit under monitoring by U.S. and Israeli intelligence. The Pentagon has requested $67 billion in funding for the war on an emergency basis to pay for troops and restocking of munitions.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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