Mossad Chief in Washington as Netanyahu Presses Trump to Resume Iran War

The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency was in Washington on Friday for talks with senior Trump administration officials about the war with Iran, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presses President Donald Trump to resume military action against Tehran.

Mossad director Roman Gofman met CIA director John Ratcliffe in Washington, Axios reported, citing three sources familiar with the visit. He was also expected to travel on to Miami to meet Steve Witkoff, the White House envoy who has handled the administration’s diplomacy with Iran. The Jerusalem Post separately confirmed the meetings, citing its own sources, and CNN also reported the visit. Read a detailed account of the visit for further detail.

Neither government has confirmed the trip in public. The Mossad, the CIA and the White House all declined to comment, and nothing has been announced about what, if anything, was agreed.

A quiet visit, a public campaign

Gofman is one of Netanyahu’s closest confidants. A major general with no prior intelligence background, he served for two years as the prime minister’s military secretary — the job that sits between the prime minister and Israel’s armed forces and intelligence agencies — before taking over the Mossad in June 2026, succeeding David Barnea at the end of his five-year term.

His trip comes amid an increasingly open campaign by Netanyahu to persuade Trump to return to military strikes on Iran. According to Axios, the prime minister has been pressing the president for weeks, and Trump has so far turned him down, favouring continued economic pressure and a naval blockade while keeping the door open to a negotiated settlement.

The two leaders discussed the war in a phone call on 5 November, a US official told Axios. On Thursday, Trump said the United States did not need a deal with Iran and removed Vice President JD Vance from the Iran file, a further sign of how unsettled the administration’s approach has become.

Trump holding the line — for now

Trump said on Thursday that he could use military force against Iran “right now” if American allies or ships were threatened, a remark that underlined how quickly the standoff could change. For now, though, the reporting suggests the president is resisting the push for renewed strikes.

The stakes are considerable. The United States and Israel launched the war on Iran on 28 February 2026, and it is now in its ninth month. The Pentagon’s own records put the American death toll at 23, a figure that has become politically charged after Trump said no American service members had been lost. Iran claimed this week to have struck a US radar site in Bahrain, a claim Washington denied.

A divided Israeli security establishment

The visit also exposed divisions inside Israel. Channel 12 reported that Gofman’s trip was not disclosed to Gadi Eisenkot, who has been asked to form Israel’s next government, in his security briefing with Netanyahu on Thursday. Eisenkot was reportedly not persuaded by the prime minister’s case for an immediate strike.

CNN, citing two Israeli sources, reported that Netanyahu has even considered a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran — an attack Israel would carry out on its own, without American participation. That claim rests on CNN’s reporting alone, and neither government has commented on it.

Others in Israel’s security leadership are said to favour restraint. The split matters because any renewed campaign would need American intelligence, refuelling and air defence support to be sustained — the very things Gofman’s meetings in Washington and Miami appear designed to secure.

What happens next

Gofman’s expected meeting with Witkoff in Miami is the next marker to watch. Witkoff has been the administration’s main channel to Tehran, and any shift from diplomacy back to strikes would run through him. The Insight International’s report on the meetings provides further context.

For now, the visit stands as the clearest sign yet of the pressure Trump faces from his closest ally in the region — and of his reluctance, so far, to give in to it. With the war in its ninth month and the diplomatic track in visible disarray, the question is no longer whether Netanyahu wants the war resumed, but how long Trump is prepared to say no.