To Iran’s relief Witkoff has not tabled an agenda that:
1. strays beyond stopping Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb.
2. has not raised Iran’s supply of drones to Russia for use in Ukraine
3. Nor has he tabled demands that Iran end arms supplies to its proxies fighting Israel.

That has alarmed Israel, and to a lesser extent Europe, which sees Iran’s desire to have sanctions lifted as a rare opportunity to extract concessions from Tehran.
Israel is also wary of Trump’s aggrandisement of Russia.

Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, and Mossad’s head, David Barnea, met Witkoff last Friday in Paris to try to persuade him that when he met the Iran negotiating team the next day in Rome, he had to demand the dismantling of Tehran’s civil nuclear programme.

Witkoff refused, and amid many contradictory statements the administration has reverted to insisting that Iran import the necessary enriched uranium:
1. for its civil nuclear programme,
2. rather than enrich it domestically.

Russia, might again become the repository of Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, as it was after the 2015 deal.

The Israeli thinktank INSS published a report this week detailing how Russia, in search of anti-western allies in the global south for its Ukraine war:
1. has shown opportunistic political support not just to Iran but to Hamas.
2. Israel will also be uneasy if Russia maintains its role in Syria.

But if Trump has upset Netanyahu over Iran, he is keeping him sweet by giving him all he asks on Gaza.
Now Trump’s refusal to put any pressure on Israel to lift its six-week-old ban on aid entering Gaza is informing Europe’s rift with Trump.

Marking 50 days of the ban this week, France, Germany and the UK issued a strongly worded statement describing the denial of aid as intolerable.

1. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is calling for a coordinated European recognition of the state of Palestine,
2. and Saudi Arabia is insisting the US does not attack Iran’s nuclear sites.

Witkoff, by contrast, has been silent about Gaza’s fate and the collapse of the “EPIC ceasefire”.

But if European diplomats think Witkoff was naïve in dealing with Netanyahu, it is nothing to the scorn they hold for his handling of Putin.