President Donald Trump publicly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday after recent Israeli strikes in Lebanon threatened to disrupt a fragile diplomatic effort aimed at extending a ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
Speaking from Évian-les-Bains, France, where he was attending the G7 summit, Trump addressed Israel’s weekend strikes on what officials described as a Hezbollah command center in Beirut. The attack came just before a U.S.-Iran truce was expected to be formalized Friday in Switzerland, raising concerns that the broader ceasefire framework could unravel before it was signed.
Iran warned that the strikes could complicate the emerging agreement, prompting Trump to call on “all sides” to stand down.
“Netanyahu has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon,” Trump said. “[I] didn’t like where two hours before we’re signing the agreement that there was an attack in Lebanon, in Beirut.”
Trump also described the strike as “vicious,” adding that it was “too much.”
The remarks marked a notable public rebuke of Netanyahu from a president who has repeatedly emphasized his close alignment with Israel. Even as he criticized the timing and scale of the Lebanon strikes, Trump sought to stress that his relationship with Netanyahu remained intact.
“But the president added he and Netanyahu have a ‘great relationship,’ and ‘we’re talking about some end details.'”
“You know, you can do too much also, but we’ve had a very effective relationship,” Mr. Trump said. “Without us, without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did.”
Trump went further, arguing that Israel’s fight against Hezbollah had dragged on too long and that civilian casualties were becoming impossible to ignore.
“Too many people are being killed, and you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you, and I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they’d do a better job of doing it,” he said.
The comments underscored growing tension between Trump and Netanyahu at a critical moment in regional diplomacy. In May, the Israeli Prime Minister said that he wants Israel to “wean off” American military aid.
The prime minister explained that currently Israel receives about $3.8 billion of U.S. military aid a year. The U.S. has agreed to provide a total of $38 billion in military aid to Israel from 2018 to 2028.
