Israeli report claims Trump-Netanyahu phone call on Iran was tense, heated

The most recent phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump involved a heated exchange and exposed differences between the two leaders on how best to deal with the Iranian threat, according to a report in Israel’s Channel 12 news. 

In spite of this, after the conversation between the two, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying, “The Prime Minister and President Trump agreed on the need to ensure that Iran will not obtain nuclear weapons.” 

Channel 12 claims that the conversation was much more charged with Trump and Netanyahu at odds over the likely success of a political agreement to end the Iranian nuclear threat. It reported that Trump told Netanyahu that he prefers to advance a diplomatic solution with Iran and that he believes in his ability to bring about a good agreement that also meets Israel's security needs. 

Following the publication of the Channel 12 report, the Prime Minister’s Office denied that the two leaders held “a tense conversation.” 

“There was no tense conversation and the report was false regarding the content of it,” the statement said. 

Channel 12’s report came shortly after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News in an interview, that “President Trump specifically sent me here to speak with the prime minister about how those negotiations are going and how important it is that we stay united and let this process play out.” 

Noem described her conversation with Netanyahu as “a very candid conversation.” 

“I’ve known the prime minister for many years, and had many good conversations with him,” Noem told the American news channel, “but this was one directly from the president, and I think the prime minister greatly appreciated it.” 

Noem refused to relate any specifics about the conversation, saying, “I’m not going to share what the president’s personal message was to the prime minister, but the prime minister had a conversation afterwards with us that they don’t remember a bilateral meeting that was quite that candid and direct about how we really felt about the importance of Israel, our support for Israel, but that this negotiation was critically important too.” 

“We’re on a short time frame here as well,” the secretary stated. “We aren’t talking weeks and months and years before President Trump will make a decision with Iran. They’ve been given a very short timeframe, a matter of days. I asked the prime minister to work with President Trump to make sure we’re making wise decisions together.” 

Pressed further about the conversation and whether Israel is “still having intentions to attack Iran,” Noem again demurred, saying, “We discussed Iran and we discussed where Israel’s position was and I also delivered the message on where the president was.” 

She reiterated that “the president will never accept a nuclear-capable Iran. He will never accept them having nuclear weapons and building the capacity to that.” 

She also said that the Israel intelligence information is shared with the United States and that the Trump administration is using that intel, along with American intelligence, for the nuclear talks. 

“So I think the message to the American people is we have a president that wants peace but also will not tolerate Iran capability in the future,” Noem stated. “They will not be able to get a nuclear weapon, and this president will not allow it. But he also wanted this prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to be on the same page with him.” 

Noem continued, saying, “We talked about the track record with Iran, you can’t trust them. We’ve got 46 years of proof that you can’t trust Iran.” 

She said that Netanyahu was right for distrusting Iran, but stated that “he also needs America, and he knows he needs America, and he needs our president to be his ally and to work together. We are stronger when we are united.”