The story

President Donald Trump is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, their first in-person meeting since they launched a joint offensive against Iran in February. Netanyahu convinced Trump the time was right for regime change in Tehran, but a war that was promised to last weeks has dragged on for five months. Hard-line members of the old Iranian regime have entrenched their rule, and there is no clear exit path as Iran continues to throttle shipping through a vital chokepoint, driving up global energy prices.

Netanyahu is in Washington to attend the funeral service of Sen. Lindsey Graham, whom he has called a dear friend. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also in Washington for the funeral and is using the opportunity to meet with Trump. The two leaders plan to discuss the framework agreement the U.S. and Israel signed with Lebanon over the Israel-Hezbollah war and the expansion of the Abraham Accords, according to a White House official.

The meeting comes as Trump has grown increasingly willing to publicly criticize Netanyahu for being too aggressive with Lebanon. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II, with every one of them a disaster for America First. New polling shows that a growing share of the president's base no longer believes the war is worth its economic costs. Trump admitted that he called Netanyahu "f---ing crazy" over Israel's military operations in Lebanon.