United States President Donald Trump, after the signing of the peace deal between Tehran and Washington, said it would mitigate Israel’s “biggest risk.”
Revealing his conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before signing the document, Trump said that the agreement protects Israel from a nuclear attack by Iran. “Look, think of what Israel is getting. They’re not going to be nuked,” the US President told reporters in Évian-les-Bains in France, where he was attending the G7 summit.
Trump said that he had told Netanyahu that Israel was getting “the most important thing” that they had asked for.
“It’s very simple. I told Bibi, “Bibi, your biggest risk was that they’d drop a nuclear weapon into the middle of Israel. They’d only need one, and there would be no more Israel,”” the US President said, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio standing to his side. “Think of it, Bibi. You got the best, the most important thing that you were asking for is that,” Trump said, asserting that Israel was “very happy” with the deal.
The US President had earlier criticised Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, saying Netanyahu would have to “be more responsible”. “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,” the US President said at the G7.
Uncertainty over Israel’s Lebanon offensive
Trump’s remarks come even as uncertainty looms over the fate of Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. The US and Iran on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to end the conflict in West Asia, which includes a call for Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and waives US-backed sanctions on the country, according to details released by both countries, the Associated Press reported.
The agreement also starts a 60-day negotiating window, wherein discussions would take place to reach a final conclusion on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. However, the deal also includes a commitment to Lebanon’s territorial integrity in the face of Israel strikes and its conflict with Hezbollah. This is one of the sensitive parts of the deal, with Israel maintaining that it has the right to defend itself and to occupy parts of Lebanon, according to AP. Meanwhile, Iran has reiterated from time to time that any peace deal it signs should stop fighting “on all fronts”, including Lebanon.
The Israeli PM had, on Monday, refused to back down from the offensive against Hezbollah and withdraw from Lebanon. “As long as I am the prime minister of Israel, it will not happen,” Netanyahu had said, asserting that Israel’s withdrawal was not part of the US-Iran deal.
Netanyahu has come under fire in his country for the initial deal between US and Iran. “Israel is paying the price of Netanyahu’s hubris and blindness, and the price of the manipulations that he tried to pull on Trump,” AP cited former Israeli PM and Netanyahu rival Ehud Barak as saying in an interview with the country’s public broadcaster on Monday.
