TEL AVIV — Reports of a setback in US-Iran negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program are placing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a dilemma. Combined with a damning new nuclear watchdog report about the expansion of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, some in Israel regard these developments as the country’s final opportunity to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

Israeli officials have been quiet this week over the US-Iran talks, but Netanyahu was surely hoping that reports that the negotiations are near collapse are true and that Iran’s response to the US proposal it received Saturday will anger President Donald Trump. 

Israel’s last hope

Netanyahu must be hoping that Trump will walk away from talks with Iran and agree to mobilize the US military to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. For now, he has run out of other options but to go it alone. The Israeli prime minister and his associates had counted on national security adviser Michael Waltz to lobby for an Israeli-American strike in Iran, but Trump fired him. The president has also reportedly reassigned three State Department officials Israel regarded as sympathetic to its policies.