Trump and Netanyahu meet at White House as Israel and Hamas discuss ceasefire

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Donald Trump welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Monday for the first time since the U.S. and Israel took military action against Iran last month in an effort to dismantle the country’s nuclear capabilities.

The two leaders complimented each other on their alliance in the conflict, with Netanyahu presenting Trump with a letter he said he sent to the Nobel Prize committee, in which he nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, a longtime ambition for the president. Israel would be the second country to nominate Trump for the award.

Trump told reporters that Iran wants to talk with the U.S. and that Washington and Tehran have scheduled talks. He declined to reveal the timeline for those talks, telling reporters, “I’d rather not say, but you’ll be, you’ll be reading about it tomorrow.”

Asked whether regime change should take place in Tehran, Netanyahu said that is “up to the people of Iran.”

While a ceasefire between Israel and Iran continues to hold after last month's 12-day conflict, a similar agreement in Gaza is proving harder to achieve, despite the optimistic tone struck by Trump and Netanyahu in recent days.