New Delhi, July 28 -- WASHINGTON - They sat across from each other in the Oval Office on Tuesday for the first time since their war against Iran began in February, and both men were careful about what they said aloud. Benjamin Netanyahu called them "great friends" who "always find a way to work things out." Donald Trump acknowledged "a little difference, but pretty close." Neither specified what the difference was.

The meeting was their eighth of Trump's second term and the first since a joint American-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, launched in late February, transformed the region's security landscape. In the months between, the two governments disagreed about Lebanon's peace framework, about F-35 jet sales to Turkey, about the ...