By Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged having called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crazy in an expletive-filled phone exchange over fighting in Lebanon, while the U.S. was trying to negotiate an end to hostilities with Iran.
In an interview broadcast Wednesday, Trump was asked whether he had called the longtime Israeli leader “effing crazy” and accused him of ingratitude, paraphrasing a report by Axios.
“I did,” Trump told the “Pod Force One” podcast. “I wouldn’t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know.”
Trump went on to say he and Netanyahu get along very well.
According to the Axios report, which cited an unidentified U.S. official, Trump said to Netanyahu in a call on Monday: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
Trump said in the interview: “At some point I said, Bibi, we got to stop this. We got to stop it.”
Israeli officials have not commented publicly on the phone conversation since the Axios report, but Israeli media have quoted sources playing down the friction between the two leaders. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on Trump’s confirmation of the comments.
Iran has said it will not agree to a deal with the United States to end the war that Trump and Netanyahu launched in late February, unless a ceasefire also covers Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia that fired across the border in support of Tehran.
Hostilities have continued despite a U.S.-mediated agreement announced on Monday that led Israel to step back from attacking the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, and the Iran-backed group to halt cross-border strikes.
Israeli drone strikes killed at least six people in southern Lebanon and targeted a car just south of Beirut on Wednesday, Lebanese security sources said, while Israel said it intercepted a hostile aircraft likely fired by Hezbollah.
Trump bristled when asked if Netanyahu “tricked” him into attacking Iran, saying his critics were “the enemy.”
“I mean, I’m the one that started it,” Trump said. “I started because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
“Now that pertains to Israel, because they probably would have been the first one to get hit. There would be no Israel. Tell you what, if there wasn’t me, there would be no Israel right now.”
Trump maintained that Israel would have been in a far worse position if he had not abandoned a 2015 accord reached by President Barack Obama and other world leaders with Iran, under which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.
After Trump withdrew from that deal during his first White House term in 2018, Iran produced stockpiles of near-weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, which Trump now demands it relinquish. Trump’s critics say Iran is now closer to making a nuclear weapon, and it will be hard for Trump to negotiate a better deal today.
Trump has used expletives about Israel in the past, including publicly saying last year that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the fuck they are doing.”
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Peter Graff)
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