By KAREEM CHEHAYEB and JOSH BOAK Associated Press
BEIRUT (AP) — President Donald Trump in an interview released Wednesday confirmed an earlier report that he criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “crazy” in a Monday phone call, saying he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fighting of Hezbollah in Lebanon was holding back peace talks with Iran.
But even as the U.S. president acknowledged the tensions, he insisted that his relationship with Netanyahu was solid and they connected, in part, because they’re both “wartime” leaders.
“We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him,” Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One.”
The president’s acknowledgement of the tense call with Netanyahu that involved expletives is a sign of the growing pressure he faces to resolve the Iran war, as higher energy prices and economic uncertainty are harming Republicans going into midterm elections and hampering global commerce.
But Trump remained noncommittal about a timeline for settling the conflict, saying the Strait of Hormuz might stay blocked through the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 7. He has insisted that Iran stop any efforts that could lead to a nuclear weapon and that the strait be reopened for the shipments of oil and natural gas.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be (closed through Labor Day), but I think it’s unlikely. I think that we’ll have it. I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly,” Trump said.
The U.S. president added that Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his late father, is “involved” in peace talks for ending the war.
“They have a lot of respect for him,” Trump said in the interview with “Pod Force One.”
Trump said that Khamenei is not doing well due to injuries sustained in an airstrike, but “they say he’s giving approval because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time.” Khamenei’s father was killed as part of airstrikes when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of March.
Still, the path toward a durable ceasefire remained unclear as hostilities continued in Lebanon.
An Israeli strike Wednesday hit a car on a busy highway just south of Beirut, hours before the second day of talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington are set to take place.
The strike in Khaldeh came without warning, and it was not immediately clear if the person targeted was killed. Israel usually says it targets members of the Hezbollah militant group in these drone strikes.
Israel and Lebanon on Monday reached a U.S.-brokered agreement where Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs and Hezbollah would end its attacks on northern Israel. The agreement was made hours after Israel announced that it was going to launch strikes across the sprawling urban neighborhoods near the Lebanese capital in what would have been the most intense strikes since a nominal ceasefire went into effect on April 17.
The State Department said progress was made during the first day of talks on Tuesday. Lebanon hopes to widen the scope of the ceasefire so it becomes comprehensive across the country. Israel wants to disarm Hezbollah immediately before it ends its operations in Lebanon and withdraws its troops from dozens of villages and towns.
Not long after the strike on Khaldeh, the Israeli military said it intercepted what it called a hostile aircraft coming from southern Lebanon, but did not immediately blame Hezbollah. Hezbollah has not claimed a cross-border attack since the agreement.
Israeli military warning rattles coastal city
Israeli strikes over southern Lebanon continued, especially in and around the battered cities of Tyre and Nabatiyeh. Overnight, two strikes near Tyre killed four Syrians and two Palestinians.
Israel overnight warned the Christian neighborhoods in the coastal city of Tyre that Hezbollah members are among them. Many Lebanese Shiite Muslims fled to those areas in recent days because they were spared from the aerial bombardment along the Mediterranean coast.
After the warning, the Lebanese army deployed to the Christian district of Tyre in an effort to prevent Israeli attacks there and to show that Hezbollah has no armed presence in the area.
Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon days after the latest war was sparked on March 2 when Iran-backed Hezbollah fired rockets towards northern Israel in solidarity with Iran. Israeli troops have pushed deeper into Lebanon over the past week, as Hezbollah continues to claim rocket and drone attacks.
The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 3,468 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million people. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, at least 27 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon. Two civilians have also been killed in northern Israel.
Among the 27 killed was a soldier in southern Lebanon, whose death was announced late Monday by Israel’s military. It added that seven more soldiers were wounded in the incident, three of them severely.
Hezbollah’s use of hard-to-detect fiber-optic drones has been deadly for the Israeli military, which is struggling to respond.
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Boak reported from Washington.