In September 2024, thousands of handheld pagers and walkie-talkies of Hezbollah operatives exploded simultaneously in two separate events across Lebanon and Syria. It was an Israeli attack nicknamed Operation Grim Beeper. Israel had secretly packed pagers with explosives and sold them to Hezbollah operatives.Months later, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House for his first visit of the second Trump term in February, he gifted a gold-plated pager to Trump and a silver-plated one to Vice President JD Vance. Donald Trump told an ally that the gift was disturbing after what happened in Lebanon and Syria — as reported by the NYT.During the meeting, Netanyahu gave Trump a presentation about Iran and showed images of the country’s various nuclear sites. But Trump at that time was not convinced and was thinking whether to contain Netanyahu. From that ‘disturbing’ gift, the US’s Israel policy underwent a major shift in the past few months with Donald Trump now weighing on whether the US should join Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. The president met with his national security team on Tuesday to discuss next steps.In a social media post Tuesday, Trump threatened Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and said that US knew where he was. “He is an easy target, but is safe there,” Trump wrote. “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”Khamenei returned the threat and said any form of US military intervention will “undoubtedly be met with irreparable harm”. “Wise people who know Iran, its people, and its history never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because Iranians are not those who surrender,” he added.
Trump was getting impatient with Iran over slow pace of negotiations
Apart from Israel’s pressure, Trump was also getting impatient with Iran over the slow pace of negotiations and started to conclude that the talks were going nowhere. NYT reported that Trump vacillated for months over how to contain Netanyahu as he told an ally that Netanyahu was trying to drag him into another Middle East war that he promised in his election campaign that he would keep America out of. But he also came to believe that Iranians were playing him in the diplomatic negotiations.