US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Friday and agreed to meet in the US “in the near future,” according to the latter’s office.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just spoke with US President Donald Trump and congratulated him on the occasion of the 250th Independence Day of the United States of America,” read a statement from the Israeli government.
“The Prime Minister said in the conversation that the US is a guarantor of global freedom, and Israel highly appreciates the close bond between the two nations,” he added.
Netanyahu has not been to Washington since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28.
The seemingly amicable call came after tensions between the two reached new heights in recent weeks as Trump pushed for diplomacy with Iran and demanded Israel refrain from attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has since signed a tri-lateral agreement with Lebanon and the US on June 26 to help restore peace to the region.
Trump on June 1 told Netanyahu he was “f–king crazy” over his attacks on Lebanon, fearing they would provoke more war with Iran.
”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,” a US official summarized Trump’s comments, which the president later confirmed to The Post.
The president later confirmed to The Post that he had used the language, saying he was “a little bit perturbed” by Israel’s continued military operations in Lebanon while insisting the two still had “a very good relationship.”
“We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him,” Trump insisted on The Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast. “I’m a wartime president, he’s a wartime prime minister.”
But Trump had another testy phone call with Netanyahu on June 8 — as the administration was in the final stretch of securing the US-Iran memorandum of understanding — during which the president warned that restarting a full-fledged war with Tehran could risk losing US support.
“I told Bibi, ‘you better be very careful what you do, because you could be left alone against Iran very soon,’” Trump told Israel’s Channel 12 at the time.
