Marco Rubio plans to visit Israel to brief Netanyahu on US-Iran talks

Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to travel to Israel next week to update Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the US-Iran nuclear talks, two Trump administration officials said.

Rubio is expected to meet with Netanyahu on Feb. 28, according to the officials, who spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity to detail travel plans that have not yet been announced.

The US and Iran recently have held two rounds of indirect talks over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. Officials from both sides publicly offered some muted optimism about progress this week, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even saying that "a new window has opened" for reaching an agreement.

 

"In some ways, it went well," US Vice President JD Vance said about the talks in an interview Tuesday with Fox News Channel. "But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through."  Netanyahu visited the White House last week to urge President Donald Trump to ensure that any deal about Iran's nuclear program also include steps to neutralise Iran's ballistic missile program and end its funding for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Trump is weighing whether to take military action against Tehran as the administration surges military resources to the region, raising concerns that any attack could spiral into a larger conflict in the Middle East.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that a change in power in Iran "seems like that would be the best thing that could happen." He added, "For 47 years, they've been talking and talking and talking."  The Trump administration has dispatched the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier, from the Caribbean Sea to the Mideast to join a second carrier as well as other warships and military assets that the US has built up in the region.

Dozens of US fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s and F-16s, have left bases in the US and Europe in recent days to head to the Middle East, according to the Military Air Tracking Alliance, a team of about 30 open-source analysts that routinely analyzes military and government flight activity.

The team says it's also tracked more than 85 fuel tankers and over 170 cargo planes heading into the region.

Steffan Watkins, a researcher based in Canada and a member of the MATA, said he also has spotted support aircraft like six of the military's early-warning E-3 aircraft head to a base in Saudi Arabia.

Those aircraft are key for coordinating operations with a large number of aircraft. He says they were pulled from bases in Japan, Germany and Hawaii.