Netanyahu proposed US land blockade on Iran during July White House visit — report

Nava Freiberg is The Times of Israel's deputy diplomatic correspondent.

US President Donald Trump’s new plan to impose a land blockade on Iran was first suggested by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his July visit to the White House, The Telegraph reports.

Trump and Netanyahu discussed several options to increase pressure on Iran during the White House meeting, including a land blockade, according to a Telegraph report at the time of the meeting.

Trump announced last week the establishment of so-called Task Force Iron Gate, a 20-person unit tasked with identifying and disrupting illicit shipments crossing Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea, as Tehran increasingly relies on overland trade routes to circumvent the US naval blockade.

This week’s Telegraph report notes, however, that the initiative could also be a diversion, with an unnamed source suggesting that Israel and the US may have floated the plan as a red herring to distract Iran from their actual next move.

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