WASHINGTON — President Trump revealed in an interview published Thursday that he had veto power over operations Israel carried out against Islamic terror groups following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
“All of those attacks were done in auspices with, actually, with me directly. You know, with Israel doing the attacks, with the pagers and all that stuff,” Trump told Time magazine, referring to the decimation of Hezbollah in a spectacular September 2024 Israeli intelligence operation involving exploding beepers.
“Look they’ve been, Israel’s been very respectful of this country,” Trump went on. “And they let me know everything. And sometimes I’d say no, and they’d be respectful of that.”
The Hezbollah attack, which effectively defanged the Lebanon-based terror organization and ended any chance of Israel facing a second front during its war against Hamas in Gaza, took place while Joe Biden was in the White House.
“[Former President Barack] Obama treated Israel so badly,” the president told Time. “You know, they didn’t want the Iran nuclear deal, which was a horrible deal.”
Trump also said he was “surprised” that Iran was not able to build a nuclear weapon during the Biden administration, telling the outlet: I was sure that when I left, I was sure that they would be able to.”
“It’s sort of funny, when [Democrats] say, ‘Oh, well, we should get a little credit.’ No, they shouldn’t. It’s the opposite. They went with Iran. We had to get that stench off. They went with Iran. They didn’t go with the other side, which is a whole lot of nations. They went—they placed all their money on Iran.
“And so what you’d have right now, if they had their way, is that you’d have a nuclear-weaponized, at the highest level, nuclear Iran. That’s what you’d have. And there’d be no talking to them. There would be no talking to them.”
In June, American jets bombed three of Iran’s most high-profile nuclear sites, with experts saying Tehran’s weapons program has been set back several months, if not years.
“The more I thought about it … the more I realized that that attack and bringing down Iran made it possible to get it done,” Trump said of the cease-fire agreed between Israel and Hamas earlier this month.
“Without that, you couldn’t have done this. It would have been impossible. The Arab countries wouldn’t have done it. But even if they did, it wouldn’t be worth anything, because they’d have that cloud of a nuclear weapon dropping on their head.
“They’d be thinking about that, and it would have meant very little, I think. It would have meant very little because it was a nasty threat. That was a very—that was a very big, big, strong bully. And they used that power that they had very strongly over the Middle East, and they really controlled it, but they don’t control it anymore. They’re not respected anymore at all.”
Israel and Hamas formally suspended hostilities Oct. 10, with the terror group releasing its last 20 living Israeli hostages.
While there have been some skirmishes since, the Trump administration is hoping to shepherd the two sides through the next phase of the deal — reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and the acession of a transitional government.
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