Israeli conduct in Lebanon puts Trump, Netanyahu on collision course

President Donald Trump unleashed a blistering, expletive-laden rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon, pressing him to halt a planned strike on Beirut, according to Axios.

The Monday phone call came hours after Iran threatened to abandon negotiations with Washington in response to Israel’s actions in Lebanon. On the call, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” and accused him of ingratitude, the U.S. news outlet said citing three sources briefed on the call.

“You’re f****** crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your a**. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this,” one U.S. official quoted Trump as telling Netanyahu. A second source said Trump was “pissed” and at one point shouted, “What the f*** are you doing?”

One U.S. official said Trump warned that following through on Netanyahu’s threats to bomb the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel internationally. Two of the sources said Trump claimed he had helped keep Netanyahu out of jail, referring to his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

U.S. officials said Trump was aware Hezbollah had been firing on Israel and believed Israel had a right to defend itself, but felt Netanyahu’s recent actions were disproportionate. In addition to threatening strikes on Beirut, Israel has been expanding its ground invasion in southern Lebanon.

Another U.S. official said Trump was alarmed by the high civilian death toll in Lebanon and objected to Israeli tactics that involved knocking down entire buildings to kill a single Hezbollah member.

An Israeli official later said that Israel no longer plans to strike Hezbollah targets in Beirut, reported Axios.

Trump and Netanyahu have had several tense conversations in the past, but have generally coordinated closely on Iran and regional security. One official described this call as one of Trump’s worst with Netanyahu since returning to office, driven largely by concern that Netanyahu’s escalation in Lebanon was jeopardizing U.S.-Iran talks.

After the call, Trump wrote on Truth Social that negotiations with Iran were “continuing, at a rapid pace.”

Netanyahu, in a public statement after the conversation, said he had told Trump that Israel would attack targets in Beirut if Hezbollah did not stop its strikes on Israel and that Israel would continue operations in southern Lebanon. “Our position remains the same,” he wrote.

A second U.S. official, however, said Trump had effectively overruled Netanyahu. “Bibi said, ‘OK, OK, just make sure everything is taken care of,’” the official added.

On the ground Tuesday, the call had an immediate effect as Israel kept up strikes on southern Lebanon but refrained from carrying out threatened ⁠strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Ground reality

However, the development has failed to reassure many Lebanese or halt the broader war in south Lebanon, which Netanyahu has vowed would continue. The din of an Israeli drone over Beirut kept residents on edge Tuesday.

The Lebanese government has said it would seek to expand the cease-fire in talks with Israeli officials in Washington ⁠on Wednesday, the latest in a series of face-to-face meetings Beirut has attended despite Hezbollah objections.

Iran has demanded a Lebanon cease-fire as part of any wider deal with the U.S. to end the three-month-old war that began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February.

In the south, Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire hit a string of towns, and the Israeli military ordered residents of the city of Nabatiyeh to leave ahead of strikes.

Hezbollah announced two operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Tuesday, but no cross-border rocket attacks. The Israeli military overnight said it had intercepted two projectiles crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

If Israel’s northern communities were attacked, the Israeli military would evacuate and strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, warned Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz in remarks provided by his office.

“The test of this policy for protecting our communities will be simple and will become clear in the coming days: either the attacks on Israeli communities stop, or if attacks continue and we strike Dahiyah in Beirut, this equation will be realized,” he said.

Iran raises stakes

Beirut resident Faten al Chehime said the Israeli warnings led her ⁠to ⁠flee her home in the southern suburbs on Monday, just two weeks after she had returned.

“Every time we return to our homes, there is a warning for us to be displaced again,” said Chehime, speaking at a camp sheltering displaced people in Beirut.

More than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been uprooted by the war, which began when Hezbollah fired on Israel in support of Tehran on March 2.

Israel had pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, in an early phase of the war, but carried out only two strikes there since Trump declared a Lebanon cease-fire in April.

Tensions had spiked Monday after Netanyahu ordered strikes on Dahiyeh, with Iranian state media reporting that Tehran had stopped indirect talks with Washington due to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Iran’s military warning residents of northern Israel they should leave to avoid harm if Israel attacked Beirut.

“If Israeli aggression on Lebanon continues, we won’t just stop the negotiation track, but we will ⁠be in a direct confrontation with the enemy,” Iran’s top negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said he told Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, according to a post by Ghalibaf on X.

Meanwhile, a senior Lebanese official told Reuters that the objective of the Washington talks beginning Tuesday would be to agree on actionable and sustainable ways to reinforce the cease-fire, possibly through phased approaches.

The official said that could mean establishing “pilot zones” – specific geographic areas where hostilities would stop, Israeli troops would withdraw and Lebanese soldiers would deploy, gradually building up to ⁠a full cease-fire across ‌all of Lebanon.

The official ‌said that, while Hezbollah had not announced its endorsement of the partial cease-fire, it had halted fire on northern ⁠Israel.

Israel wants Hezbollah disarmed – an objective shared by the Lebanese administration led by President Joseph Aoun and ‌Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who have sought its peaceful disarmament.

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