Bibi to talk Iran sanctions in meeting with Trump

ISRAELI PRIME Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump will hold their first official meeting on February 15, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday.

The announcement came after it emerged Iran had carried out a ballistic missile test on Sunday.

Mr Netanyahu said on Monday night he would ask Mr Trump to increase sanctions against Iran.

An anonymous US official provided told Reuters the Iranian rocket had been launched from a site near Semnan, east of Tehran. TheKh or rams hahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding.

Meanwhile, a tweet by Mr Netanyahu in support of Mr Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico kicked off a diplomatic furore.

Israeli officials claimed Mr Netanyahu had not been commenting on Mr Trump’s controversial plan, but the Mexican government demanded an official apology.

On Saturday night, Mr Netanyahu tweeted: “President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea”.

Mr Netanyahu had been referring to the new fence built on Israel’s border with Egypt between 2011 and 2012. The barrier was rebuilt following a terror attack by infiltrators from Egypt in August 2011, in which eight Israelis were killed, but it has also blocked African migrants who, until then, were crossing the border in their thousands.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman quickly tried to clarify, saying: “The prime minister referred to our specific security experience which we are willing to share. We do not express a position on US-Mexico relations.” But the Mexicans were not having any of it, and diplomatic protests were quick to arrive, in addition to complaints from the Mexican Jewish community that such an intervention was not helpful for them either. On Monday morning, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Mr Netanyahu’s words were “like an aggressive” attack. Israel’s ambassador in Mexico City was called in to clarify the statement.

If moving the embassy had been on Mr Netanyahu’s mind when he wrote the tweet, an interview with President Trump on the Christian Broadcasting Network made it clear it would not be happening soon. While Mr Trump said he liked the “concept” of moving the embassy to Jerusalem, he had yet to make a decision as “this has two sides to it. It’s not easy.”

In the end, President Reuven Rivlin was sent in and, following a phone conversation with President Enrique Peña Nieto on Tuesday evening, the Mexican Foreign Ministry announced the crisis was over.

Iran carried out a ballistic missile test on Tuesday