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Trump is poised to reinforce Iran’s regime — despite Netanyahu’s pressure
President Donald Trump’s Wednesday meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took place with an air of urgency around Iran. Yet the men left their three-hour conclave without resolving a fundamental divergence: Israel is deeply suspicious of any agreement with the Islamic Republic, and Trump has a visible preference for keeping diplomacy alive.
So visible, in fact, that Trump announced on Truth Social after the meeting that negotiations with Iran will continue. Where does that leave Israel, which is deeply concerned that Trump, in search of a quick win, will go for a deal that eases sanctions — strengthening the Iranian regime at precisely the time when it seems brittle enough to fall? And what about Iranian critics of the regime, who have good reason to feel betrayed by an American president who encouraged them to protest, and now seems poised to pursue accommodation with the authorities who had protesters killed en masse?
Of course, nothing in the Trump era can be analyzed with absolute certainty. Strategic misdirection is a recognized feature of even normal statecraft, and Trump has elevated unpredictability into something close to doctrine. Yet even allowing for that ambiguity, the meeting made clear that Israel and the United States are not aligned on an absolutely key issue — a potentially perilous state of affairs.
What does Israel want?
Israel does not trust the Iranian regime, for myriad reasons. The Islamic Republic’s missile programs, its sponsorship of proxy militias, and its long record of hostility toward Israel are viewed as elements of a single strategic problem.
Because of that deep and deeply justified mistrust, Israel is wary of any deal that might stabilize or legitimize the regime — a risk raised by Trump’s interest in a new nuclear deal. Israeli leaders are concerned about long-term risk. A renewed agreement focused narrowly on nuclear restrictions would almost inevitably entail sanctions relief or broader economic normalization. Such measures, from Jerusalem’s perspective, would strengthen the very Iranian system that has spent decades spreading havoc across the region.
That doesn’t mean Israel would prefer immediate military confrontation, or that it will speak out against any deal. An agreement that would dismantle Iran’s expanding missile range, including systems capable of reaching Europe, and cut funding from its network of allied armed groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Palestinian factions Hamas and Islamic Jihad — would possibly be of interest. Trump has so far not publicly stressed those demands.
Israel is politically divided, but when it comes to Iran, a broad consensus cuts across political lines. The regime must fall or radically change, for the sake of human rights within Iran’s borders, and that of a healthy regional future outside them.
What does Trump want?
The American position is less straightforward, largely because it is filtered through Trump’s distinctive political style, and his limited regional knowledge. Trump often appears unbothered by expert and public opinion; he seeks drama, through visible wins, deals, and dramatic reversals. He will present any outcome as an amazing achievement that no predecessor could have hoped for — even if he ends up signing an agreement that looks quite a lot like former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, which he walked away from in 2018.
Trump’s broader worldview might provide insight. Unlike earlier American administrations that explicitly championed democracy promotion, with mixed results, Trump’s national security posture has consistently downplayed ideological missions. His rhetoric and policy frameworks have reflected skepticism toward efforts to reshape other societies’ political systems, instead emphasizing transactional relationships and the avoidance of prolonged entanglements.
This orientation is reinforced by his political base. A significant segment of MAGA-aligned voters wants a more isolationist foreign policy. Within that framework, negotiations that promise de-escalation and risk reduction are politically attractive. Military confrontation, by contrast, carries unpredictable costs.
Trump’s posture, oscillating between threats of force and enthusiasm for negotiation, reflects the strange truth that American political alignments on Iran defy traditional expectations, with hawkishness losing favor on the right. He has preserved the military option while simultaneously projecting optimism about a deal. Meanwhile, a huge and growing armada is parked in the waters near Iran.
What does Iran want?
Assessing Iranian intentions is notoriously difficult. The regime’s history of opaque decision-making, tactical deception, and disciplined negotiation complicates any definitive reading.
Yet certain baseline assumptions are reasonable. First, the regime seeks survival. Whatever ideological ambitions authorities may harbor, self-preservation remains paramount. Sanctions relief, economic stabilization, and reduced risk of direct confrontation with the U.S. all serve that objective.
Second, Iran is unlikely to accept a permanent prohibition on uranium enrichment, particularly at civilian levels. Tehran has consistently framed demands for “zero enrichment” as infringements on sovereignty — a defensible position under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Third, the regime has strong incentives to resist constraints on its missiles and militias, even though the militias are completely indefensible. But the regime exists, essentially, to export jihad, and those groups have been a central pillar of Iran’s project for decades.
Could the Iranian regime be brought down?
This question lurks behind every discussion of Iran, though policymakers rarely address it directly. Regime change, while rhetorically invoked at times, presents immense practical challenges. Many observers doubt that aerial strikes alone could produce political collapse. Modern regimes, particularly those with entrenched security apparatuses, rarely disintegrate solely under external bombardment. Iran’s leadership has demonstrated resilience under severe economic and military pressure, maintaining internal control despite periodic unrest.
That means meaningful regime destabilization would almost certainly require fractures within the state’s military, intelligence, and security forces, or coordinated ground dynamics that external actors can neither easily predict nor control. Such scenarios introduce enormous risks, including civil conflict, regional spillover and severe disruptions to global energy markets.
The regime’s brutality may reinforce its durability. A leadership willing to impose extreme domestic repression is less vulnerable to popular pressure than one constrained by public accountability. Last month Trump suggested the U.S. would support the protesters; that pledge appears to no longer be on his radar. The protesters were not seeking a better nuclear deal — which is now his apparent sole focus — but better lives.
So what happens now?
All of this suggests that Israel will be unhappy with any outcome to this period of tensions. It is much less likely that pressure from Trump will bring real reform to the Iranian regime is than that Trump will sign off on a deal that seems counter to Israel’s long-term interests.
In the coming days, it may become clearer whether Netanyahu persuaded Trump to expand the scope of negotiations to include Iran’s missile program and its network of proxy militias. It is also possible that talks will collapse, and that military action will follow.
But this much is clear: If the regime survives intact and is strengthened in the process, that would be a profound tragedy. For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has oppressed its own people while exporting instability across the Middle East. That is roughly the same span of time that communism endured in Eastern Europe before popular unrest finally brought it down.
Only a month ago, there was a palpable sense that the Iranian people were courageously pressing for a similar reckoning. To reward a weakened and discredited regime at such a moment by helping it stabilize itself — in exchange for promises about uranium enrichment alone — would be a historic missed opportunity.
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A new Hebrew press in Berlin argues that Israel doesn’t own the language
(JTA) — Dory Manor and Moshe Sakal, who run a press for Hebrew literature in Berlin, are often asked if their business is Israeli.
The partners in life and publishing come from Israel, though they have lived in Berlin and Paris for the better part of two decades. But they say their publishing house, Altneuland, is neither Israeli nor European. Instead, they sought to create a home for Hebrew literature from around the world — open to Israeli writers, but free from Israeli state funding.
Altneuland is the first non-religious Hebrew publishing house to set up outside of Israel since the state was established. Manor and Sakal founded the press in 2024, and this fall, Altneuland will launch in the United States.
“I believe that the Hebrew language is not only a national language,” said Manor, the editor-in-chief. “Hebrew has always been a global language, and even modern Hebrew has been an international language — mostly European, but not only — before the creation of the State of Israel.”
Manor and Sakal have expanded their mission from Hebrew literature to publishing Jewish authors across languages, including German, French, Russian and Yiddish. The U.S. launch will include an original English-language book by Ruth Margalit, along with English translations of Hebrew novels by Noa Yedlin and Itamar Orlev.
Altneuland is also the German publisher of “The Future is Peace,” a New York Times bestseller by Israeli Maoz Inon, whose kibbutznik parents were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, and Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah, whose brother died in 1990 after being tortured in an Israeli prison.
In a time when thousands of authors and publishers globally have pledged to boycott Israeli institutions over what they identify as a genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza, Manor and Sakal say that Altneuland is not a boycott. They work with writers who live in Israel and sell to Israeli bookstores. Establishing a Berlin-based publishing house made them ineligible for Israeli public funding so they could avoid the fraught question of accepting support from the government.
Sakal, the publisher, acknowledged that Israel was a center for Hebrew and Jewish literature, but said it doesn’t have to be the only center. “We are not replacing it,” he said. “We are doing something else.”
Altneuland allows the founders to work with Israelis while staying apart from the Israeli Ministry of Culture, which provides funding for Israel’s publishing industry, largely through literary awards.
In January, the ministry canceled its annual culture prizes. Culture Minister Miki Zohar, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, cited the political bent of the prizes and said their cancellation was owed to the organizers “clearly ignoring artists whose opinions are held by most of the country.” The cuts came shortly after Zohar launched an alternative state film award ceremony, cutting funds to the Ophir Awards — Israel’s equivalent of the Oscars — after it awarded best film to “The Sea,” about a Palestinian boy in the West Bank who attempts to go to Tel Aviv and see the sea.
Israel’s literary world, which pays poorly and lacks broad recognition, depends heavily on state-sponsored prizes.
“This government is, for me, an enemy of Israel and not Israel itself,” said Manor. “So no, I’m not boycotting anyone, but I don’t want to deal with the current Israeli government. I do want to deal with Israeli readers, with Israeli writers.”
Those writers share many of Manor and Sakal’s political views. The founders’ goal is to make Altneuland a home for Jewish authors with a liberal outlook — especially those who feel pressured by rising nationalism, whether in Israel or elsewhere.
Margalit, a Tel Aviv-based journalist, will publish a collection of her political and cultural profiles in Israel through a collaboration between Altneuland and Pushkin Press. Her book, “In the Belly of the Whale: Portraits from a Fractured Israel,” is coming out in September.
Margalit said she was drawn to Manor and Sakal’s “humanist spirit,” along with their ability to publish the book simultaneously in English, Hebrew and German.
“At a time when so many people are quick to jump to labels or cancellations, it was bracing to find thoughtful partners who were similarly aggrieved about the political situation as I was,” she said.
Arad’s Hebrew novel, “Our Lady of Kazan,” will be published in German by Altneuland as “Kinderwunsch” in July. Arad, an Israeli-born writer, has lived in California for over 20 years and authored 12 books of Hebrew fiction. One Haaretz reviewer summed her up as “the finest living author writing in Hebrew” who was “in exile in the U.S.”
Arad’s books, often featured on bestseller lists in Israel, tend to deal with Israelis living abroad. The theme fits into the global perspective of Altneuland, targeting readers who are curious about crossing national boundaries.
“I’ve been thrilled to see that Israeli readers are willing — even eager — to read stories about Israeli expatriates,” said Arad. “The experience of living outside Israel, whether temporarily for work or study or on a more permanent basis, has become a central theme in Hebrew literature.”
Altneuland takes its tongue-in-cheek name from Theodor Herzl’s 1902 novel, literally meaning “old new land.” The founder of political Zionism envisioned a utopic, multicultural Jewish state where Jews and Arabs lived peacefully together.
“When we finally decided to call our press Altneuland, it was because our Alteuland, an ‘old new land,’ is a land without territories. It is the Hebrew language,” said Manor.
Berlin is a thriving hub for up to 30,000 Israeli expatriates. Among them is a growing community of writers and intellectuals, including some who left Israel out of frustration and anger at their government.
Manor and Sakal see another reason for making Berlin their home base. They view Altneuland as a continuation of Schocken Verlag, a Jewish publishing house in Berlin that improbably persisted through the 1930s. Schocken Verlag was a cultural lifeline for Jews under Hitler’s regime, publishing books by Franz Kafka, Heinrich Heine, Rabbi Leo Baeck and Shmuel Yosef Agnon, a founding father of modern Hebrew literature.
In 1939, the publishing house was finally forced to shutter and moved to British Mandate Palestine. The reestablished Schocken Books lives on today as part of Penguin Random House. But Manor and Sakal said their project aligns with the original Schocken Verlag — the one destroyed by Nazism.
“What we find in both models is the possibility of a Jewish cultural space that is cosmopolitan, multilingual, humanist, non-national, and not dependent on a single territory,” said Sakal.
Altneuland has faced skepticism, particularly from Israel. Publisher and editor Oded Carmeli said in Haaretz, “The truth is that there aren’t enough Hebrew readers outside of Israel to support a publishing house – not even a bookstore, not even a shelf in a bookstore – and even if there were enough readers, no store in Berlin or Madrid would maintain such a shelf, for fear of repercussions.”
The Altneuland duo said their risky proposition is working out so far. Most of their Hebrew readers remain in Israel, where they are printing books in the thousands and going into second printings on select titles. But they are also cultivating a readership in Germany, where they print smaller special runs of Hebrew-language editions.
Naomi Firestone-Teeter, the CEO of the Jewish Book Council, said that Altneuland has emerged as pressure mounts on Jewish authors from the right and the left through “book bans, boycotts and cancellations.” (The council itself was recently criticized by dozens of Jewish authors for a “bias toward centering Israeli and Zionist voices.”)
“In this moment, we see their effort to build another home for Hebrew literature and Israeli voices as a meaningful contribution to the Jewish literary landscape,” said Firestone-Teeter.
Altneuland’s books in German and English are the fruit of collaborations with Pushkin Press and New Vessel Press. Manor said they were “positively surprised” when they began talks about working with publishers in Europe and North America. Those conversations began in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, and continued against the backdrop of a rising international chorus that has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. So far, no one has boycotted them.
“Usually we had interesting talks, very open talks with people who understood, in most cases, the nuances between our being a Hebrew publishing house and Israel as a state, Israel as a regime,” said Manor. “This is something that we could not predict when we created Altneuland.”
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Jewish library and Chabad near Buenos Aires attacked, Argentine Jewish advocates say
(JTA) — Counterterrorism officials in Buenos Aires are investigating after a Jewish library and a Chabad center in a suburb in the Argentine capital were attacked last week.
On Thursday night, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Israeli Literary Center and Max Nordau Library in La Plata, according to a statement published Friday by the center’s board of directors. Multiple individuals “threw a blunt object filled with fuel at the front of the library, breaking windows and causing material damage,” the board said, noting that the device did not ignite and no one was injured.
The library, a secular educational center founded in 1912 that promotes Argentine Jewish culture, said it is reinforcing security measures in light of the attack.
On Sunday, the Chabad of La Plata was also attacked, according to DAIA, the Argentine Jewish community group, which condemned both attacks. DAIA, which first reported the Chabad attack, did not describe the nature of the attack beyond reporting no injuries.
“We are deeply concerned about the recurrence and the short timeframe of these incidents,” DAIA said in a statement.
The Ministry of Security of the Province of Buenos Aires and the Complex Crimes and Counterterrorism Unit of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police are investigating both attacks.
La Plata’s Jewish population numbers about 2,000, and its Chabad center has existed for more than 25 years. Argentina as a whole is home to the sixth-largest Jewish community in the world and the largest in Latin America, mostly centered in Buenos Aires.
“These acts of violence threaten democratic coexistence and the values of respect and pluralism that we defend our neighbors,” La Plata Mayor Julio Alak said. “We will not allow hatred and intolerance to have a place in our city.”
Argentina is the site of some of the deadliest attacks on Jewish institutions in modern history. A 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires killed 29 people, while a 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish community center left more than 80 people dead. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, a pro-Israel and philosemitic economist, has advanced efforts to hold Hezbollah and Iran responsible for their alleged role in the attacks after years of foot-dragging by prior leaders.
The incidents in La Plata come as Jewish institutions around the world are on high alert amid a string of attacks since the start of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran in February. Several synagogues and Israeli outposts in Europe have faced arson attacks that a group seen as tied to Iran have claimed responsibility for staging. No one has been injured in those attacks.
Argentina has also faced homegrown antisemitism scandals. In September, a video of a group of Buenos Aires high school students on a graduation trip chanting “Today we burn Jews” went viral, earning condemnation from Jewish community advocates and even Milei himself. The group, from the private school Escuela Humanos, was traveling with Escuela ORT, a Jewish school.
Following the attacks in La Plata, comments on a local news outlet’s Instagram post about the attack on the local Chabad Sunday were filled with antisemitic tropes, including blood libel and false flag theories. Antisemitism watchdogs say false flag allegations, holding that an operation is staged to look like an attack in order to garner sympathy for the victim or attribute blame to another party, have flourished in recent years against Jews and Israel.
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Cornell’s Jewish president clashes with students following on-campus debate about Israel
(JTA) — Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff and student protesters are trading accusations after an incident in which protesters surrounded the president’s car following an on-campus debate about Israel.
The protesters, from a group called Students for a Democratic Cornell, released a video appearing to show that President Michael Kotlikoff had backed up into one of them while a protester shouts that the car ran over his foot.
In response, Cornell released its own video depicting what it said was a “harassment and intimidation incident,” its enhanced version of which it said offered “complete footage of the parking lot interactions, instead of clips to support a narrative.” That video shows students surrounding the president’s car as he tries to exit his parking space. After he eventually departs, the students continue to mill around with no obvious indication of injury to any of them.
In a statement of his own, Kotlikoff said that despite being surrounded by protesters who banged on his car windows, he waited until his backup camera showed a clear path before maneuvering out of the spot.
“The behavior I experienced last night is not protest,” Kotlikoff said in his statement, released Friday night. “It is harassment and intimidation, with the direct motive of silencing speech. It has no place in an academic community, no place in a democracy, and can have no place at Cornell.”
In an Instagram post, the protesters rejected Kotlikoff’s claims that they banged on his car and that they had previous records of misconduct on campus. They also reiterated their allegation that he had struck them.
The incident marks a relatively rare example of a clash between a university and pro-Palestinian student protesters two years after the student encampment movement roiled campuses across the United States, including at Cornell. The Ivy League university, like many others, enacted new rules designed to constrain protests that have kept demonstrations at bay amid pressure from the Trump administration to curb what it said was antisemitism among protesters. In November, Cornell agreed to pay $60 million to resolve federal antisemitism allegations.
Kotlikoff became Cornell’s president in early 2025, saying at the time that he was “very comfortable with where Cornell is currently” following “two relatively peaceful semesters” in which there were only isolated incidents that violated university rules around protest. He soon rejected pro-Palestinian students’ demands to cut ties with the Technion university in Israel. But he also urged the campus to foster academic debate around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The event that preceded his clash with students on Thursday represented a striking example of such debate. Sponsored by an ideologically diverse array of groups, including the pro-Israel advocacy groups StandWithUs and the Zionist Organization of America as well as the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has previously been suspended for violating university rules, the event was the second in a two-part “Israel-Palestine Debate Series.”
The series was organized by the Cornell Political Union according to a format its website says it has long maintained. The format features a lecture by a speaker followed by formal responses from students and an audience debate.
In the first event, held earlier in April, the Israeli historian Benny Morris lectured on the topic “The American-Israeli Alliance Serves America’s Interests.” Morris is a liberal Zionist critic of the Israeli government whose work has included foundational research on the founding of the state arguing that many Arabs were expelled, rather than fled, during the 1948 war.
The second, on Thursday, featured the pro-Palestinian Holocaust historian Norman Finkelstein, who lectured on the topic “Israel Was Not Justified in Its Response to October 7th.” Finkelstein, who has criticized Morris for showing a pro-Israel bias, has compared the plight of the Palestinians to that of Jews during the Holocaust, and Students for Justice in Palestine posted a picture of its members posing with him on Thursday.
Kotlikoff offered introductory remarks at the event, which promoted a no-technology policy designed “out of respect to student[s] who will be given the opportunity to speak openly on a divisive topic.”
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