New Delhi: US-Israel relations seem to be under serious strain, and US Vice President JD Vance’s unusually stinging rebuke to Israeli critics of the US-Iran memorandum to end the West Asia war is proof.
Addressing a press conference Thursday, Vance warned Israel not to alienate its only remaining ‘powerful ally’ in the US, pointing out the billions of dollars in military assistance Washington provides to the country each year.
“The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump,” Vance said. “And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
Vance was defending the MoU reached this week between Washington and Tehran to end the war in West Asia, an agreement that has drawn criticism from Israeli conservatives and Israeli ministers.
Asked about an Axios report claiming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was privately “fuming” over the agreement, Vance said the report did not reflect his own conversations with the Israeli leader.
“That’s not reflective of the conversations that I’ve had with him,” Vance said, before adding that “maybe he’s saying something to somebody else that he’s not saying to me.”
While stopping short of directly criticising Netanyahu, Vance took aim at members of the Israeli cabinet whom he said had attacked both, the agreement and Trump personally.
“My message to them would be twofold,” Vance told reporters. “No. 1: Donald J. Trump is the only Head of State in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”
“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government,” he continued, “I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
Vance went further, reminding the critics in Israel of the extent of American military support. The United States also currently provides Israel with roughly $4 billion annually in military assistance, as the two countries negotiate a new aid package.
“Two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected Israel have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars,” he said.
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Bibi-Trump spat
The relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has grown increasingly tense in recent weeks. More than two angry phone calls where they sparred with each other have been reported.
Trump attempted to downplay the disagreement during closing remarks at the G7 summit in France Wednesday. The president suggested that Netanyahu could use a “softer touch” in dealing with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
In his first public comments since the agreement was reached, Netanyahu, however, said that Israel valued its partnership with Washington but that the country would continue occupying parts of southern Lebanon to protect communities along its northern border.
Israel Thursday published a map showing an expanded military control zone in southern Lebanon and signalled that it reserved the right to conduct operations beyond it, a move that appeared to challenge elements of the US-Iran agreement, which calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Amid Israeli actions in Lebanon, Iran delayed sending delegates to Switzerland for signing the MoU on Friday. Later, Vance also cancelled a trip to meet the Iranian negotiators.
Before this development, Vance had said, “What the president has grown frustrated [with], sometimes, is that we seem to be right on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the agreement.”
“And then all of a sudden there’s a major explosion that goes off in a civilian population center in Beirut, and a lot of people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah lose their lives. That’s not acceptable,” he said.
“That’s the sort of thing that we’ve asked for closer coordination, so that we ensure it doesn’t happen,” he added.
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key figure in the governing coalition, has repeatedly denounced the agreement and insisted that Israeli troops remain in Lebanon regardless of the deal’s provisions.
In an interview with The New York Times Thursday, Vance singled out Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“What is your exact proposal?” Vance asked. “You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”
“I find this whole freakout in Israel a little bit odd because I think that it comes from a place of mistrust,” he said. “And I think that America has earned the trust of that region, of the world.”
Ben-Gvir fired back in a post on X. “This is the proposal,” he wrote. “To deal with the Nazis of the 21st century, just as the United States dealt with the Nazis of the 20th century.”
Trump, for his part, sought to calm tensions after Vance’s remarks, urging all parties in the region to uphold the agreement.
“We expect a complete Ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel,” the president wrote on social media.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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