What does Netanyahu want from meeting with Trump?

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1:28a little bit later on the programme, who says that the hotel where he is staying and some distance from the epicentre, he says it bent like rubber. More on that when we have it in probably about 10 minutes or so. But we're going to lead with a story that you, in a sense, might think is not much of a story. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, making his seventh visit to the White House since Donald Trump returned to power. Mr Netanyahu has made the trip more often than any other world leader. But this is a meeting which is being seen as unusually sensitive, one that could have a major impact on both the US strategy over Iran and also Mr Netanyahu's political future, given that a general election in Israel is less than three months away.

2:15The opportunity for this trip came with what, for the Israeli Prime Minister, has been a blow, the loss of one of Israel's staunchest supporters in Washington, the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Mr Netanyahu will be attending the senator's funeral later today. This is what he had to say before flying out of Tel Aviv yesterday. Tomorrow I will fly to Washington to meet at his invitation with President Trump and afterwards to participate in memorial service for a great friend of Israel, the late Senator Lindy Graham. I must say he was one of Israel's greatest friends since its inception and it is fitting that we pay him this respect.

2:52I will also be discussing all pending issues with President Trump, including the situation in Iran. A correspondent in Washington, D.C. is Bernd DeBussman. Bernd, I mentioned that it's sensitive. Explain why. Well, it's very sensitive. As you mentioned, it comes at a very difficult time for Prime Minister Netanyahu. But more importantly, from the Trump administration's perspective, It's not clear that the two see eye to eye on the topic of Iran. There had been some reporting that suggested that Prime Minister Netanyahu might bring what Israel considers evidence that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear capacity at Pickaxe Mountain.

3:35And President Trump, in an interview this morning with Fox, reacted quite angrily, saying that he doesn't need Bibi for that. He just wants to stay involved and that he shouldn't be telling the world what the two men will be discussing. The U.S. president is also keenly aware that there's a sizable number of Americans who increasingly believe that Israel dragged the U.S. into this war with Iran. So the U.S. president, some have theorized it'd be politically expedient for him to put some distance between himself and Israel going forward with regards to any sort of future military operations in Iran.

4:10In contrast, Bernd, I mean, there has been a suggestion of a different flavor to another meeting with another world leader who's going to be present for this for the senator's funeral. And that's Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, with whom Donald Trump has had a very choppy relationship, at least at the start of his second term. But now a suggestion that when the two men meet, it might be on slightly better terms. Indeed, it has. I think there's been he's come a long way since that famous Oval Office shouting match last year with J.D. Vance and President Trump. President Trump really seems to have warmed to Zelensky over time.

4:48And I think from Ukraine's perspective, the key objective of their meeting will be pressing the U.S. for more military assistance, particularly for air defense weapons at the NATO summit earlier this year. President Trump had opened, he said he would allow Ukraine to build Patriot missiles. And I think Zelensky will be hoping to collect on that. Ben de Bussman in Washington. Thanks so much. Well, let's return to what's at stake in this meeting for Benjamin Netanyahu. Dalia Shendlin is a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. Dalia, very good to have you back on News Hour.

5:25Yeah. What do you think Netanyahu wants out of this? I mean, do you think he will be pressing for a full return to war? Thank you for having me. I think that he will want two different things. One of them has to do with the policy, and he will certainly be pressing Trump for a more hardline position with relation to Iran. We know that he has never believed in diplomacy. He doesn't want the agreements that Trump might or might not try to achieve. It's be able to revive diplomacy. But Netanyahu is, for the most part, extremely skeptical. And if there is going to be an agreement, he will try to push for some better terms.

6:02But the common wisdom in Israel is that he would prefer to see return to war. At what point exactly, we're not sure, because there's been some dispute about whether Netanyahu truly wants that to happen right now, or only when he thinks Trump is really ready to go in much stronger. But the other thing that Netanyahu really wants to do, I think, is shore up his image at home and try to portray that he has repaired the relationship with Trump because, you know, famously that relationship has deteriorated in ways that are really impossible to fudge. And Netanyahu has been trying hard to repeat the line over and over again that we just are very close friends.

6:38We just have some disagreements. But, you know, every time they interact, there is some sort of humiliating comment from Trump and not to mention policies that Trump has advanced and Netanyahu doesn't really want. So he will be trying to portray to the Israeli public ahead of elections, which are scheduled for late October, that this is an excellent relationship, one that only he is capable of maintaining. Do you think, I mean, it has been a sort of bit of received wisdom in the way in which Israeli politics has been observed is that, you know, this has been a tremendous asset for Netanyahu that he has been able to say, look, I'm closer to Israel's most powerful ally than anybody has ever been before, that equally the reverse is true, that when there are fractures in that, that it will definitely be a cost to Netanyahu in the forthcoming election?

7:31Well, this is a little bit hard to say with any precision. It's definitely true. What we absolutely know is that Netanyahu has campaigned many times on the strength of this relationship. In fact, he's campaigned on being the country's top global statesperson in general, famously in 2019 during political campaigns. He put up huge posters all throughout Israel of him shaking hands, not only with Trump, but with Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi. And he talked about what a great state person he is and said nobody else could reach that level. But I think what we're seeing here is that there's increasing criticism of the deterioration of the relationship with the U.S.

8:05in general. Netanyahu has absolutely kind of ended what was once a bipartisan American consensus over its support for Israel, that has become well known in Israel. And now I think there's even an increasing awareness that even within the Republican Party and within the Trump administration, they're significant, you know, split over Israel. We see this, you know, signs of this all the time. And so I think what Israelis are starting to internalize is that Netanyahu has kind of gambled on that relationship with Israel's most important ally, put all of his eggs not only into one basket of the Republican Party, but frankly, into one person.

8:39It's the total personalization of Israeli foreign policy and Israeli foreign relations with the most important ally Israel has, as you pointed out. And so I think there is some skepticism of that. Will that be the decisive factor? You know, it's a very easy talking point, but Israelis are focused on a whole host of issues with relation to Netanyahu's leadership and the future of the country. And so I think this will be one important one, but not necessarily the decisive one, unless there is a major development for better or for worse for Netanyahu in that relationship. Dalia Shendlin, very good to speak to you.

9:11Thank you very much for joining us from Tel Aviv. Now, as I mentioned, a number of people are reportedly trapped in a shopping mall in Japan after a strong earthquake led buildings to collapse. The Japanese Prime Minister says that several people have been injured after the 7.1 magnitude tremor in the southern coastal city of Kumamoto.

9:38The sound, well, you probably got it, of glasses crockery smashing on the 13th floor of a hotel in Kagoshima. Now, Kagoshima is about 175 kilometers from the epicenter of this earthquake. That just goes to suggest how strong the earthquake was felt. That bit of footage was recorded by Felix Umland, a German photography student in Japan who joins us from the hotel where he recorded that. Felix, welcome to the programme. First off, are you OK? Yes, I'm OK. A little bit shook up, but yeah, I'm doing fine. Tell me what it was like, because I've seen the footage, and it looks as if where you were up on the 13th floor, and maybe the effect is slightly magnified because you were relatively high up, it looked as if you were being quite violently shaken.

10:36I think it's not just slightly magnified. I think it's actually amplified quite a lot because I was talking to some locals just now, and I think down at the ground it was a lot less violent. But being up at that top floor of my hotel, there is like a little restaurant cafe situation there. And I wanted to get some work done. And about 20 minutes later, my phone just started blaring an earthquake warning. Or generally all phones around, but it was just me and two other people of staff up there. And I was just looking at my phone thinking, okay, I don't know what to do now. And you don't really get much warning with earthquakes.

11:16It's about like, I think, five seconds, maybe it felt a lot longer. But like five seconds later, just everything started shaking. I was looking up, I was looking around, there was really nobody there except for one other member of staff. And I just heard glasses flying in the kitchen and just everything in the kitchen started breaking. And there's not much you can do. It's a pretty hopeless situation, just looking around and waiting for it to stop. And then presumably the elevators, the lifts are out of action. So what you and the staff, did they, I mean, I guess they rehearsed these things. Did they then escort you down to ground level?

11:57Yes, I was escorted down. They said that the elevators are not okay to use through the speakers in the building. And one thing not a lot of people know is that in Japan, the buildings are built to actually move while there are earthquakes. So they actually kind of move with their earthquake instead of being rigid and static. But it feels like the building beneath you kind of turns into a liquid. It's a very surreal feeling that I only knew from little earthquakes before I had felt. but it's something that growing up in Europe, I never really had experienced before. And I knew that feeling a little bit, but this was on a completely different scale.

12:44It literally feels like you're standing like at the top of a rubbery snake or kind of a liquid, like this solid ground beneath my feet that was solid a few seconds ago, just suddenly turned into this mass that was moving. And yeah, so they told me no elevators go down to the first floor using the like emergency escape staircase. And then they were checking on everybody down in the parking lot in front of the hotel. The very fact, though, that you felt it so strongly and you're, you know, 175 kilometers away from the epicenter. I guess there must be real concern in Japan at what is happening closer to the epicentre of the earthquake and those who are missing.

13:34Definitely. I think it was a lot stronger there because if you know how these scales for earthquake measurement work, being at a scale 7 is way, way stronger than being at a scale 5 because it's not linear. Indeed. Well, Felix, we're grateful to speak to you late at night in Japan. I'm very pleased that you are well. But, of course, we are keeping across the story. And if we have further updates, we will bring them to you. Also coming up on the programme, the late US Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Trump, will be buried today. We'll hear from a filmmaker about the time, the long time he spent with a politician who had himself long advocated for a hard response to Iran.

14:26One of the issues that Senator Graham had with President Trump was the fact that he felt he constantly had to be in the room to keep pushing his position, right? And if he wasn't, then things could start turning left, right? So I think he was getting frustrated with the fact that President Trump wasn't prosecuting the war in the way that he had thought he would at the outset. More from that documentary filmmaker in about 30 minutes. One other headline, firefighters in France and Spain say they've made progress against some of the worst wildfires in living memory, but warn the danger is far from over.

15:08You're with NewsHour. It's live from the BBC. I'm Tim Franks. In Ecuador, there is a state of emergency, the latest in a series, as the country battles local drug gangs with links to international cartels. Once one of South America's most peaceful corners, Ecuador now has a murder rate that is one of the highest in the world. The country's become the gateway for about 70 % of the cocaine reaching the US and Europe. The drug isn't produced there, but floods in from neighbouring Colombia and Peru, the two biggest cocaine producers in the world. Our senior international correspondent, Orla Garen, spent a week in the country and sent this report, which I should say includes some graphic testimony.

15:49We've just arrived at the scene of a killing. There are four police cars, about a dozen or so armed police officers here. There are some local people standing, looking on. And just in front of me, there's a motorbike on the ground. And beside it, the body of a man.

16:28We've met one local man here who is willing to speak. In fact, he says he wants to speak on behalf of the community, but he doesn't want to be identified because of fears of retaliation. His words are spoken by a BBC colleague. We're used to this by now because it happens every day here. You might just step outside and catch a stray bullet. You can't go out and chat like before. Do you think the situation here will ever change, will ever get better? It's a lost cause. Criminals are like ghosts. They just pop up wherever they please.

17:15The police are moving forward now quickly. They all have their weapons at the ready. They've identified this house before. They believe there are weapons hidden and they want to get hold of them. All they found was some ammunition and two handguns, one of them rusty. The police captain leading the search is John Charles Bustamante. He says he can only trust the officers right beside him. We've had many, many bad people inside our unit, inside the state, inside the politics. We've had many, many guys that are corrupted. And they're in the pay of the gangs? They are in the pay of the gangs. For you, for your officers, how risky is it to go to a place like this?

18:17What happens to local people if they speak out against the gangs? They kill them. They kill them? Yes, they kill them.

18:32I'm sitting inside a narrow one-room breeze block house with tin on the roof and I'm with a gang leader who has told us to call him Jonathan he says he's 37 years old four of his gang are here with him they're all armed some with short-barrelled semi-automatic rifles. We're sitting here and you have a handgun, which is actually pointed in my direction. How many people have you killed?

19:04Well, until now, about eight, I think. I don't remember well. So you think you've killed eight people, but you're not sure about the number? No, I'm not really sure. He tells me the police are not a problem. He has four of them on his payroll.

19:29Whenever they're going to do an operation, they call me. They tell me to hide things and to get out of here. When they arrive, they find nothing. Do you have to pay a lot for that?

19:42Of course we pay a monthly rate. It depends. You pay$1 ,500 or$2 ,000 a month. The cocaine that you're selling is killing people. Do you ever think about that? You can't really hide the truth. As you know, drugs kill, they hurt humanity, and most of all they hurt teenagers. How can we root out something that cannot be rooted out? And that report was from the BBC's Orla Guerin in Ecuador.

20:16Back to our top story. Donald Trump has said that he's paused his assault on Iran temporarily, very temporarily, he says, just to give talks one last chance. Iran denies there are any talks happening with the Americans, but we know they've been talking to the Omanis, given that while Iran has the coastline to the north of the Strait of Hormuz, Oman controls the coastline to the south. Abdullah Baboud is an Omani academic and visiting professor at the Faculty of International Research and Education at Waseda University in Japan. I think the war has changed perception about the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran has found that this is a winning card, and they want to play it.

20:54And obviously, they came up with a number of proposals, even within the MOU that was signed between the Memorandum of Understanding. There was mention that Oman and Iran would talk about this. The Iranians want to impose a toll on the shipping into the Strait of Hormuz. For Oman, this is a no-go because this is against international law. Oman is a signatory to the United Nations agreements on this and has ratified it. Iran has not, and also the United States has not ratified this agreement. So Oman will not go ahead with Iran in terms of imposing tolls on shipping because this is international waters and it respects that.

21:40That's obviously, in the longer term, Amman's role as a mediator, a country that has good relations with Iran, good relations with the US. I just wonder how far that role is complicated by the fact that you've got a US president whom many people see as quite a volatile character And you've got an Iranian government where, I mean, you may be talking to Iranian government representatives who themselves don't necessarily represent the whole of the Iranian leadership because, you know, there may well be even harder liners in the background who don't want there to be an agreement. It's tough for Amman to take on that role, isn't it?

22:32Absolutely. It's one of the toughest things to do when you are not directly talking to the people who are making the decisions behind the scene. And, you know, as you correctly described it in Iran, you have the foreign ministry, you have the government, and then we have the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards. And we also understand that Trump has taken out most of their leadership. so that there are new faces, there are new people, different perception. It's not easy to deal with a situation like this. It's a very opaque situation. And on the other hand, you have President Trump and his way of doing things which can change, not even overnight, within hours.

23:23And it's very difficult to negotiate between two parties with this kind of characteristics. And that was Abdullah Baboud, a Marnie academic. Just to say, we are keeping across the earthquake in Japan. We've got a live page up on the BBC News website, bbc.com forward slash news, with pictures and videos. Rescue teams are searching the rubble of a mall in Kumamoto. As nighttime sets in, it's getting on for midnight there. There are many people missing in that collapsed ball. You're listening to NewsHour.

24:08Welcome back to NewsHour. Big questions today over the sustainability of the worldwide boom in shares in tech companies, particularly those linked to artificial intelligence. Today's shares fell sharply in South Korea, the main KOSPI index dropping about 8 % at one point, which in turn triggered a brief halt in trading. The BBC's business editor, Simon Jack, is here in the NewsHour studio. Simon, what are you reading into what happened today? So there's a number of forces which are sort of colliding at the moment. There is the long-running question mark over whether the enormous amounts of money being spent on the infrastructure for AI, you can ever recoup it to get a return on that investment to justify the amount that's being spent.

24:46Now, that's been a long-running theme. And it's not just like the railroad. Once you've built it, you know, you can use it for the next hundred years. Maybe when you build your data centre in two years time, you need the latest chip. So it's sort of open ended capital expenditure. Can you get the returns on that? So that's out there already. You've then had some breakthroughs from Chinese chip makers who are doing things at lower cost and are making some strides into areas of chip manufacture they previously had not. So is there a cheaper version coming down the road? And then you've got the customers who are saying, I'm not quite sure what the use case is.

25:23Plus, you've got a full-on, if you like, at least half full-on, Luddite Rebellion in some places in the US, who are saying, we just don't want these data centres here. They use enormous amounts of energy. They use enormous amounts of water. And you've got some of the brightest and best in the universities all over the world sort of booing when sort of AI people come along because they think they're going to steal their jobs. So they add all of that together. And, you know, you get a couple of, for example, the Chinese breakthrough. and these things can come together and create quite a lot of volatility.

25:55Now, I've just been looking at the NASDAQ, which is the US tech heavy. It has not followed Asia down. So it's shrugging off some of that. And up to now, there's always been a kind of buy the dip mentality, saying this is going to be the dominant technology of the future. So any opportunity you can get in, if the price comes down a bit, you should take it. That seems to be the prevailing wisdom, although we have seen some falls. But keep your eye out for the big earnings. We've got Microsoft, we've got Meta, we've got Apple coming up this week. So they've been absolutely burning cash on our hundreds of billions, hundreds of billions.