Highlights from G7: Trump’s Damning Statements about Israel in Lebanon & More

Peloni:  During a meeting with the Emir of Qatar, Trump gave some frank and revealing statements.  Highlights below.

This is a damning reproach of Israel and its handling of the war in Lebanon and Trump argues on behalf of Turkey’s puppet in Syria, Jolani, to be trusted with doing a better job in dealing with Hezbollah without “killing everyone”.  Here is one key excerpt from Trump:

“Without the United States there would be no Israel, without me, there would be no Israel … I’ve had a great relationship with BB, but now BB has to uh be more responsible with respect to Lebanon. Lebanon used to be a great country. It was a country where you had professors, doctors, lawyers.  The great intellect was in Lebanon. Now it’s just it’s terrible. I would say of all countries they’ve been treated the worst and they can’t defend themselves and they have Hezbollah which is a problem for them. So uh no I’m not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah.”
Additional highlights below with my Editorial remarks following.

Video Loads at Bottom

Peloni

US–Qatar Relations and Investment

  • Trump began exchanging kind remarks with the Qatari Emir regarding Qatar’s role in supporting US efforts in the recent war as well as Qatar’s significant role as a major investor in the US.

Iran and the Nuclear Agreement

  • Trump described the central objective of the agreement with Iran is to ensure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon while stressing that Iran would not be permitted to develop, purchase, acquire, or otherwise obtain nuclear weapons.
  • Trump further warned that Iran would face severe consequences if any effort was discovered by Iran trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
  • Trump expressed optimism about working with what he described as a more pragmatic Iranian leadership than previous generations of leaders.

Views on Regime Change in Iran

  • Trump said he does not support externally imposed regime change, arguing that such efforts historically have not worked.
  • He suggested that leadership changes in Iran had already occurred following the deaths or removal of earlier decision-makers.

Human Rights in Iran

  • Trump referenced the deaths of Iranian protesters and criticized past repression by Iranian authorities.
  • When asked whether human rights concerns could affect the agreement, he acknowledged the issue but indicated that the most severe abuses occurred under the previous leadership.

Economic Prospects for Iran

  • Trump said Iran could benefit economically if their cooperation continues and if it complies with the current agreement, while Qatar’s Emir emphasized that the immediate priority was seeing an end to the conflict.

US Economy and Manufacturing

  • Trump highlighted what he described as a resurgence of US manufacturing, while also arguing that tariffs are encouraging companies to build factories in the US
  • Trump predicted a US semiconductor production capacity would significantly grow during his presidency.

Ukraine War

  • Trump said he had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and planned another meeting later in the day.
  • He said both Russia and Ukraine continue to suffer heavy casualties and urged a negotiated settlement.
  • Trump noted a recent conversation with Vladimir Putin and expressed frustration that the conflict has proven difficult to resolve.

Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Syria

  • Trump characterized Iran as the major regional issue while describing the conflict with Hezbollah as a smaller but persistent problem [while ignoring any mention of Hezbollah’s role in the South American drug trade or international terrorism across Europe]
  • He praised the Syrian Pres. Jolani, describing him as having “protected everything that I have asked for”.
  • Trump further suggest that Syria would be a better choice for dealing with Hezbollah and indicated as much to Netanyahu.
  • Trump also criticized Israel’s strike in Beirut which occurred just shortly before the Iran agreement was finalized, describing it as “vicious” and “too much” [Ed.:  Trump ignores that the strike in Beirut was a surgical strike.]  He further criticized Israel for the campaign against Hezbollah lasting too long and causing excessive destruction.
  • He insists that Bibi has to be “more responsible about Lebanon”.

Israel and Netanyahu

  • Trump maintains that he has a strong relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, but nonetheless, expressed dissatisfaction with certain Israeli actions in Lebanon.
  • He said Israel should have resolved the Hezbollah issue more quickly and with less collateral damage.
  • Trump argued that prolonged fighting in Lebanon risks undermining broader regional diplomatic efforts, particularly the Iran agreement.

Assessment of Past Iran Policy

  • Trump sharply criticized the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) explaining that the current deal will prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb, while Obama made it certain that they would obtain one.
  • He explained that the reason he quit the JCPOA was that it enabled Iran to obtain nuclear weapons .
  • Trump credited both the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and subsequent military action against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure with preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state.

Regional Security

  • Trump claimed that Iranian missile attacks during the conflict targeted several Gulf states in addition to Israel, and that these attacks helped strengthen cooperation between the United States and its regional partners.

Editor notes:

With all due respect to Trump, his friendship and support for Israel is much appreciated, but Israel can not subrogate Israeli existential interests to foreign demands, not even from someone who has been significantly supportive of Israel in many unique ways as has been true of Trump.  The best explanation as to why this would be so can be found in the troubling and unfair depictions of Trump’s own views of Israel’s actions in Lebanon, his praise for the terrorist Jolani, and his friendship with Erdogan.  Hence, Israel’s survival can not be made dependent upon foreign friendships due to the bearing which outside third party relationships would and do have on Israel’s freedom of action in pursuing Israeli interests, particularly with regards to existential threats as exist in Lebanon, and elsewhere.

In fact, Trump’s lopsided criticism for Bibi in Lebanon and praise for Jolani in Syria was particularly disturbing, and notably, neither position is easily supportable by the facts.

Israel has been highly responsible in its execution of the war in Lebanon, both in protecting the lives of the citizens of Israel and Lebanon.  Israeli phone calls and leaflet drops as well as public announcements alert the innocents in targeted areas to move out of harms danger, specifically to avoid needless casualties. It was due to the marked increase in terrorist attacks on the Israeli population which drew the IDF back into Lebanon and which drew the IDF targeting Hezbollah’s command center in Beirut, which Trump fails to acknowledge once in his rebuke of Israel’s “vicious” attack which was in fact a surgical strike there.  It has been previously substantiated that Israel has the lowest level of collateral casualties in the modern history of warfare, and as explained by Natasha Hausdorff among others, Israel act in complete accord with international law.

Regarding Syria, it is run by an Islamist govt which does not respect the right and lives of minorities, and which has conducted genocidal murder sprees since the regime seized power, even though Trump asserts that Jolani has done what has been asked of him.  Jolani is himself a product of Turkish support, without which he would not have evaded US justice for his role in the murder of US servicemen.  Jolani can NOT be allowed to take part in Lebanon for the very reason that it would bring his Turkish proxy forces to the border with Israel in real time with Erdogan’s persistent fantasies of conquering Israel.

With regards to the Trump and Obama deals, it must be clarified that Obama sought a dominating role for Iran in the region with financial support and diplomatic cover for both its nuclear project and its missile program, both of which threaten Israel, the West, and America.  While Trump asserts his is a better deal, the problem which he ignores is that no deal can be trusted to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power because doing so is a pivotal aspect of supporting their Armegeddonist ideology, and because no deal can provide comprehensive safeguards against Iran secretly developing such a weapon.  More than this, the CIA Director Ratcliffe has noted that Iran has no intention of giving up on its nuclear ambitions.  Furthermore, just as Obama’s deal did, Trump appears to have completely ignored the relevance and importance of Iran’s missile program.

June 16, 2026 | 22 Comments »

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  1. If we assume that Trump was saying what he really thinks, he has vastly underestimated Israel. He makes it sound as if the USA was the only country in the world that could have blown up the Iranian bomb manufacturing. The real facts differ ever so slightly…

    At least he was able to say that what Bibi has been saying to congress and senate since Obama times was 100% on target. I hope that didn’t cost him too much.

    There is only one way for him to fix this self-imposed problem: if he has been playing multi-dimensional chess in a team with Bibi, he will have to come clean at some point pretty soon because otherwise his ego will be what blasts the Iranian nuclear activities to the moon. Even now, he is depending on the Israeli intelligence operations to know exactly what is going on in Iran, or was it the CIA, probably still undermined with Iranian spies, that found that hoard of documents and moved them to Israel for more thorough viewing?

    Like Sebastian reported below based on an article by Michael Snyder, it sounds as if “natural disasters” are on their way to the USA. If the US population connects these dots, he is in for a lot of trouble in the coming elections.

    Coming back briefly to the title of this article, if these were the highlights, God help us with them too!

  2. 10 Times That God Has Hit America With A Major Disaster After The U.S. Attempted To Divide The Land Of Israel”
    December 25, 2016

    “1 The last time the U.S. government refused to veto an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council was in 1979.  On March 22nd, 1979 the Carter administration chose not to veto UN Resolution 446.  Four days after that on March 26th, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed in Washington.  As a result of that treaty, Israel gave up a tremendous amount of territory.  Two days later, on March 28th, the worst nuclear power plant disaster in U.S. history made headlines all over the globe.  The following comes from Wikipedia…
    The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 28, 1979, in reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station(TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States. It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.[2]The incident was rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale: Accident With Wider Consequences.[3][4]
    #2 On October 30th, 1991 President George H. W. Bush opened the Madrid Peace Conference which brought Israelis and Palestinians together to negotiate for the very first time.  In his opening speech, Bush told Israel that “territorial compromise is essential for peace”.  At the exact same time, “the Perfect Storm” was brewing in the north Atlantic.  This legendary storm traveled 1000 miles the wrong direction and sent 35 foot waves slamming directly into President Bush’s home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
    #3 On August 23rd, 1992 the Madrid Peace Conference moved to Washington D.C., and the very next day Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida causing 30 billion dollars in damage.  It was the worst natural disaster up to that time in U.S. history.
    #4 On January 16th, 1994 President Clinton met with President Assad of Syria to discuss the possibility of Israel giving up the Golan Heights.  Within 24 hours, the devastating Northridge earthquake hit southern California.  It was the second worst natural disaster up to that time in U.S. history.
    #5 On January 21st, 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House but received a very cold reception.  In fact, President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright actually refused to have lunch with him. That exact same day the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, sending the Clinton presidency into a tailspin from which it would never recover.
    #6 On September 28th, 1998 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was working on finalizing a plan which would have had Israel give up approximately 13 percent of Judea and Samaria. On that precise day, Hurricane George slammed into the Gulf Coast with wind gusts of up to 175 miles an hour.
    #7 On May 3rd, 1999 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was supposed to hold a press conference to declare the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the capital.  On that precise day, the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded in the U.S. ripped through Oklahoma and Kansas.  At one point one of the tornadoes actually had a recorded wind speed of 316 miles an hour.
    #8 On April 30th, 2003, “the Road Map to Peace” that had been developed by the so-called “Quartet” was presented to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer. Over the next seven days, the U.S. was hit by a staggering 412 tornadoes. It was the largest tornado cluster ever recorded up to that time.
    #9 In 2005, President George W. Bush (the son of George H. W. Bush) convinced Israel that it was necessary to remove all of the Jewish settlers out of Gaza and turn it over entirely to the Palestinians.  According to the New York Times, the very last of the settlers were evacuated on August 23, 2005.  On that precise day, a storm that would be given the name “Katrina” started forming over the Bahamas.  The city of New Orleans still has not fully recovered from the damage that storm caused, and it ranked as the costliest natural disaster in all of U.S. history up to that time.
    #10 On May 19th, 2011 Barack Obama told Israel that there must be a return to the pre-1967 borders. Three days later on May 22nd a half-mile wide EF-5 multiple-vortex tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri. According to Wikipedia, it was “the costliest single tornado in U.S. history.”’

    http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/10-times-that-god-has-hit-america-with-a-major-disaster-after-the-u-s-attempted-to-divide-the-land-of-israel

    • when did trump and kushner unveil their plan to divide the land of israel”

      The Trump administration unveiled the political portion of its Middle East peace plan, led by Jared Kushner and often referred to as the “Deal of the Century,” on January 28, 2020. This followed the release of the plan’s economic portion, titled “Peace to Prosperity,” on June 22, 2019. [1, 2]
      The proposal proposed a fragmented, conditional two-state solution while allowing Israel to retain control over a unified Jerusalem and annex significant portions of the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership rejected the initiative, and the Jewish settlements council opposed it because it envisaged a Palestinian state. “

      • when did covid make landfall in the u.s.”

        “The first confirmed COVID-19 case in the United States was reported on January 21, 2020, in Snohomish County, Washington. The patient was a man who had recently returned from a trip to Wuhan, China. “

        • Early ‘80s and then again 1988-1990: I was a moderately prominent local pro-“Palestinian” activist.

          1990: My sister dies in a natural disaster caused by an arsonist who was never prosecuted for murder. One of two people and the only civilian (unless you count a prisoner working as a fire fighter as a civilian, I wonder what he was in for.)

          1990: I meet and bond with my mother’s first cousin, who had
          come all the way from Israel to attend my sister’s memorial service. a retired electrical engineer living in Yesha who made aliya in 1967 and had worked on the first generations of
          drones.

          There were other things, big and small, that began to add up.

          But it was the Oslo Terror War ten years later that flipped my politics overnight like turning on a light switch.

          Did I mention my paternal grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz?

  3. For Obama, while undermining his own country, promoting by multiple means, a Shia Caliphate, not more, not less. All the people talking about the MOU have no idea of its content but are belaboring!!!!
    My concern is 2028! Vance or a dem as president will be more than problematic.
    The Goons will wait till 2028!!!

  4. We got stuck with deeply character flawed Trump because of an overflow of emotions. The left was bombarding us with their frenzied hatred. No possibility of doing rational, policy based thinking with them.

    So convervatives looked for a huge personality, a wrecking ball to cut thruought left’s madness. It was Trump. The majority of conservatives got too inflamed to think. Politically savvy thinkers and politicos like Ted Cruz and Ron deSantis got overlooked in the primaries. Not by me, but by enough to lose.

    Now we got a flim flam man who honors money making with Qatar more than American principles, even American safety. Were still not safe from Iran. And certainly neither is Israel.

  6. Does Trump think that Lebanon lost its status as the Paris of the Middle East, because of Israel?
    It was because of MUSLIMS.
    The intelligent elite were Christians. They have now escaped to other countries.

    1

  7. Trump has a huge character flaw which has been very evident since his first term. No matter who is the friend or ally if they do not obey him like he is some semi-god or king he turns on them.

    • @Rafi
      I think you mistake Trump’s remarks about Lebanon as being a way to denigrate Bibi due to an unrelated quarrel. I would argue that this statement from Trump on Lebanon is far more substantively reflective of Trump’s personal association to Lebanon via his daughter’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, who is also Trump’s Senior Advisor on Arab and Middle East Affairs. I think Trump has been well situated to castigate Bibi’s actions in Lebanon as unconstructive, damaging and needlessly lethal, not because he is mad at him, but because he is convinced by family associations that this is so.

      • Why this piece of garbage should never have been president, precisely because of such ties, along with his ties to qatar. I was right way back a decade ago when I supported Cruz. Jewish and pro-Israel MAGA kept telling us that his “Jewish” daughter and grandchildren assured he would stand with Israel. Ivanka and her husband are fake Jews, Jared Kushner being more concerned with his gulf business interests than Israel. How stupid Jewish MAGA has been. I told people a decade ago that Ted Cruz’s support for Israel was genuine, based on his actual Christian convictions. I also warned Trump has no real principles and ultimately cannot be trusted.

        • @Laura

          So you think Harris or Clinton would be a better choice?

          Cruz had no support within his own party, regardless of what you or I might think about him. His only chance even back in 2016 was to derail Trump defeating Clinton.

          Like or not, Trump was the only source of strength which could stop what was happening to America, but something significant changed after his first term in office. We can argue what it was, or what impact it caused, but his second term has been markedly more confrontational to Israel, while still far more supportive of Isarel than what would have come in place of him had he failed to win both in 2016 and 2024.

          • You may be correct. But that was precisely the problem. Republican voters brushed aside conservative principles for a cult of personality.

            Cruz had no support within his own party, regardless of what you or I might think about him.

      • @Peloni, Trump wants the deal done and caved to Iran’s connecting Iran deal with him to Israel and Lebanon. It was a mistake to do this. It is even more outrageous, to expect to allow Hezbollah to attack and not expect Israel to react militarily. Trump is now getting petty and sounding foolish saying the saying Syrians would do a better job than Israel against Hezbollah.

        Trouble is people who do not know the situation and are Trump supporter’s uber alles, will believe him without analysis. So, Trump is fomenting more dislike of Israel.

        • @Rafi

          Trouble is people who do not know the situation and are Trump supporter’s uber alles, will believe him without analysis. So, Trump is fomenting more dislike of Israe

          l.
          Quite true

          • Without the Mossad years of intense work behind enemy lines, the B2 bombing would have been IMPOSSIBLE!
            Humility is not praised by the president. He cannot be perfect.
            Trump is talking the language of the ME!