Five hours. That's how long Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's American trip lasted, when she surprisingly flew to the United States. Destination: Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's private residence in West Palm Beach. No official comment, except for a photo shared on social media showing the Prime Minister smiling with The Donald and the caption: "Beautiful evening, I thank him for the welcome. Ready to work together."
A post that sounds like a response to the words of praise that Trump had used, calling her - according to the Wall Street Journal - "a fantastic woman" who "has really taken Europe by storm". A reserve, that on the outcome of the meeting that arises from the sensitivity of the topics discussed: Ukraine, the Middle East, duties, Starlink. But above all the one that probably inspired the blitz in the US, the thorniest and most urgent, which led Meloni - according to the New York Times - to abandon a diplomatic approach and "press aggressively" so that the dossier was at the top of the tycoon's table: the detention of Cecilia Sala in the Tehran prison.
The story of the Italian journalist, in fact, is intertwined with that of the Iranian Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, currently in Milan in the Opera prison on a US warrant and for whom the United States is requesting extradition . It was well known that a meeting between the Prime Minister and the president-elect was in the air. However, the official date circled in red was January 20, the day of Trump's swearing-in in Washington. A ceremony to which the Prime Minister had been personally invited by the US president. The decision by the judges of the Court of Appeal of Milan to set the hearing for the decision on house arrest for Najafabadi as early as January 15 may have had an impact on Meloni's agenda. Added to this is the fact that Joe Biden will arrive in Rome next week to meet the Pope. In addition to the Pontiff, the outgoing US president will meet Mattarella and Meloni herself.
And even with Biden, the Sala case will certainly be one of the topics on the agenda, but it is clear that the outgoing tenant of the White House no longer considers himself the main interlocutor with whom to address the dossier. Hence the need to tighten the times that led to the blitz in Florida. The stone guest of the trip to Mar-A-Lago is Elon Musk. The Tesla boss never appears together with Meloni and Trump in official photos and videos, but from the posts on X it is clear the key role he had in organizing the face to face. With the US president and the Italian prime minister (accompanied by the ambassador to the US, Mariangela Zappia) were instead seen several representatives of the future US administration: the future Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who called Meloni "a great ally and a strong leader") and the future Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, the next national security advisor Mike Waltz and the one who will be the new US ambassador to Italy, Tilman Fertitta.
