President Donald Trump expressed confidence in the prospect of keeping Israel from attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon after the United States made substantial progress to end the Iran war this week.
Asked if he will be able to control Israel to prevent a future outbreak in the war, the president replied, “Yeah, I will be.”
“They have a lot of respect for me, and they do as I say,” he said of Israel in a clip of his interview on The Axios Show released on Friday.
Israel has consistently bombed Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist proxy based in Lebanon, in response to the group’s attacks on Israel. Jerusalem and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire on Friday following a severe escalation of fighting overnight. Trump told NBC News that he had called Israel beforehand, asking them to agree to a ceasefire with the terrorist group. The president declined to specify if he had spoken directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on that call.
The latest Israeli airstrikes killed at least 47 people in southern Lebanon and injured 97 others, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The Israeli military said it struck 80 Hezbollah-linked targets. Israeli strikes have reportedly continued since the ceasefire deadline.
U.S. intelligence reported by the Washington Post says Israel may seek to undermine the peace deal with Iran. Tensions between Trump and Netanyahu have recently come to the forefront over disagreements about how the war should end.
Nonetheless, Trump believes he can deal with Netanyahu. Asked about his relationship with the prime minister, Trump described it as a good one but noted, “We have to keep him a little bit sane.”
During the interview, Trump boasted that Israel would not have survived the Iran war without U.S. assistance.
“If it weren’t for Donald Trump — and Bibi Netanyahu worked well with me, but he will tell you, we’re the ones with the guns, we’re the ones with the whole deal, we’re the ones with the B-2 bombers, etc.,” Trump said. “If it weren’t for Donald Trump, Israel would have been eviscerated.”
The president made a similar remark at the G7 summit earlier this week when he suggested that Syria, not Israel, should “take care” of Hezbollah militants in Lebanon because Syria would “do a better job.”
U.S. and Iranian officials were supposed to hold talks in Switzerland on Friday, with Vice President JD Vance leading the U.S. delegation, but the trip was postponed. The White House said the delay was due to logistical problems. The agreement allows for 60 days of technical talks to resolve the outstanding matter of Iran’s nuclear program. Under the agreement, the Islamic regime is barred from developing a nuclear weapon.
TRUMP SAYS HIS POWER IS UNLIMITED AFTER IRAN WAR: ‘THERE ARE NO LIMITS’
Trump plans on spending his weekend at Camp David, a presidential retreat in Maryland often used for international peace-building efforts, as the White House faces intense criticism from Democrats and Republicans.
In a previous interview clip released by Axios, Trump said “there are no limits” to his power as commander in chief following the war, adding that he has not learned otherwise.