❓ WHAT HAPPENED: President Donald J. Trump has criticized Israel’s “vicious” strikes in Lebanon last weekend as “too much,” telling reporters at the G7 summit in France: “[I] didn’t like where two hours before we’re signing the agreement [with Iran] that there was an attack in Lebanon, in Beirut,” urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon.”
📍 WHEN & WHERE: The comments were made Tuesday during the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France.
💬 KEY QUOTE: “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,” President Trump said.
🎯 IMPACT: Israel’s strikes have strained U.S.-Israel relations, with Trump expressing personal frustration toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Iran has warned that Israeli actions against its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon could jeopardize any peace deal with the U.S. However, Israeli officials insist they are not bound by the agreement.
📺 DETAIL: The U.S.-Iran agreement, which is expected to be formalized on Friday in Switzerland, aims to strengthen and extend the current fragile truce. However, recent Israeli strikes in Lebanon are creating complications. Despite this, President Trump also said he has a “very effective relationship,” though he warned that, “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.”
