On April 13, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting that the Trump administration updates him every day on the negotiations with Iran.
Netanyahu said: “I spoke yesterday with Vice President J.D. Vance. He called me from his plane on his way back from Islamabad. He reported to me in detail, as this administration does every day, about the development of the negotiations.”
Netanyahu claimed the U.S. broke off the Islamabad talks because Iran did not immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and would not commit to getting rid of all of its enriched uranium: “The explosion came from the American side, which could not tolerate Iran's blatant violation of the agreement to enter into negotiations.”
The remarks drew swift criticism from U.S. lawmakers and commentators, some of whom said they showed Israel was steering the administration's actions, Anadolu Agency and Newsweek reported. Newsweek asked the White House for comment; Netanyahu's office referred it to his earlier comments. The New Republic argued the revelation would not go over well with the growing number of Americans who see the war as driven by Israel, noting that the Cook Political Report had shifted four Senate races toward Democrats, citing an “increasingly sour national environment for Republicans.”
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry's title put the words 'Reports to Me Every Day' in quotation marks as Netanyahu's; his words were “He reported to me in detail, as this administration does every day, about the development of the negotiations,” and the title now quotes them. The entry also said Vance's first call after the failed talks went to Netanyahu rather than Congress and that a majority of Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians; neither is supported by the entry's sources, and both were removed, as were specific Senate rating changes the sources do not list.