Featured Image Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Topics: Iran, Israel, Donald Trump
Phoebe Tonks
Donald Trump issued a chilling threat to Iran on Monday, as he threatened to ‘knock the hell out of’ the nation during a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu.
During his December 29 meeting with the Israeli leader, Trump specifically took aim at rival nation Iran over its nuclear program, before making the blunt threat.
“I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re gonna have to knock them down. We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago.
“But hopefully that’s not happening. I heard Iran wants to make a deal. They want to make a deal — that’s much smarter. You know, they could have made a deal the last time before we went through a big attack on them, and they decided not to make a deal. They wish they made that deal.”
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He even took things one step further and suggested dispatching more B-2 stealth bombers to strike Iran, after reports emerged that Tehran was allegedly scouting for new sites to build a nuclear arsenal.
“Usually where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Trump said.
“I’m hearing that they’re not nuclear yet — but maybe nuclear too. The sites were obliterated, but they’re looking at other sites. That’s what I’ve heard. They’re looking.
“They have other places they can go,” he said. “And if they’re doing that, they’re making a big mistake. There’s no reason for them to do it.”
Trump added: “I hope they’re not doing it, because we don’t want to waste the fuel on a B-2, it’s a 37-hour trip, both ways. I don’t want to waste a lot of fuel.”
Despite the comments about Iran, it was just one of several topics discussed by the Israeli and US leaders, which also included the Israel-Gaza peace deal and attempts to improve relations with the newly formed Syrian government.
In particular, the two discussed the ‘second-phase’ of the Israel-Gaza peace deal will focus heavily on Hamas disarmament and the ‘rebuilding’ of decimated territory.
“We talked about Hamas and we talked about disarmament, and they’re going to be given a very short period of time to disarm, and we’ll see how that works out,” Trump said.
“If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do — they agreed to it — then there will be hell to pay for them, and we don’t want that,” Trump said.
“Countries that were with them… agreed that they would disarm. And now if they say they’re going to disarm, that’s fine. If they say they’re not going to disarm, those same countries will go and wipe them out.”
While much of Trump’s focus appeared to be on Gaza and Hamas itself, he did briefly address the concerns of US officials who had questioned Israel’s commitment to maintaining the current ceasefire.
“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel’s doing. I’m concerned about what other people are doing, or maybe aren’t doing.
“Sometimes they [Israel] don’t understand when somebody violates something that you want to give them a second chance — we hope we’ll give them a couple of second chances — but no, Israel has lived up to the plan 100%.”
While most could be forgiven for thinking it was purely a matter of politics, actually there was an unusual award announcement among the talks too, with Netanyahu revealing that Trump would be receiving the ‘Israel Prize’ in the coming days.
“We decided to break a convention… to award the Israel Prize, which, in almost our 80 years, we’ve never awarded it to a non-Israeli, and we’re going to award it this year to President Trump,” Netanyahu told reporters afterward.
The award typically recognizes cultural achievements in literature, the arts, Jewish studies and other areas, making it a first for a foreign leader.