President Donald Trump on Wednesday rebuked Republican isolationists who have argued it’s not necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, dismissing them as not being his true supporters.

“My supporters are for me. My supporters are America First and Make America Great Again,” Trump said from the Oval Office, in response to a question about the foreign policy debates between hawks and isolationists in the GOP base. “My supporters don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon. … Very simple: If they think it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, then they should oppose me.”

The president said he believes Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one.

“I don’t want to get involved either, but I’ve been saying for 20 years, maybe longer, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “I’ve been saying it for a long time, and I think they were a few weeks away from having one.”

He highlighted apparent logical inconsistencies in isolationists’ position on the issue.

“The problem is they get themselves into a thing: They don’t want them to have nuclear, but then they say, ‘Well, we don’t want to fight,’” Trump said. “Well, you’re going to have to make a choice because it’s possible that you’re going to have to fight for them not to have nuclear.”

Trump softened some of his previous criticism of Tucker Carlson, a prominent voice in isolationist circles whom the president had rebuked earlier this week for railing against U.S. support for Israel. He said that Carlson had called him to apologize.

Trump said he’d pressed Carlson on whether he would accept a nuclear-armed Iran, and said that Carlson “sort of didn’t like that. I said, ‘Well, if it’s OK with you, then you and I do have a difference,’ but it’s really not OK with him.”

“Therefore, you may have to fight and maybe it’ll end, and maybe it’ll end very quickly, but there’s no way that you can allow — whether you have to fight or not — you can have Iran to have a nuclear weapon, because the entire world will blow up,” Trump continued.

Trump said he planned to hold a meeting in the Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the situation in the Middle East, but said he would delay a decision on striking Iran as long as possible.

“I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due,” he said. “With war, things change. It can go from one extreme to the other. War is very bad. There was no reason for this to be a war.”

The president said that the United States is the only country with the capabilities to destroy the deeply buried Fordow nuclear facility, but reiterated that he had not yet made the decision to do so.

Trump said that the success of Israel’s operations on their first night of bombing raids last week had made him more willing to consider possible U.S. involvement and strikes.

He also sent somewhat mixed messages on whether he’s open to continued talks with Iran.

“I had a great deal for them. They should have made that deal. Sixty days we talked about it, and in the end they decided not to do it. And now they wish they did it, and they want to meet,” Trump said. “It’s a little late to meet, but they want to meet and they want to come to the White House … so we’ll see. I may do that. It’s a shame, it could have been done the easy way.”

He said that he’s seeking “total complete victory” over Iran, in which it cannot have nuclear weapons.

“Iran was very close to signing what would have been a very good agreement for them and maybe that could still happen, I guess,” he said, adding that Iranian negotiators’ interest in visiting the White House is “a big statement, but it’s very late.”

Trump also noted that it may be difficult for Iranian negotiators to actually leave the country to visit the White House for negotiations.

The latest comments appeared somewhat less aggressive than Trump’s warnings the previous day that the U.S. could assassinate Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump today was largely noncommittal on the issue of regime change in Iran saying, “Sure, anything could happen. That? That could happen.”

There is a chance the U.S. will join Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday, adding that “nobody knows” yet what he will decide.

“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump said in his first public comments about Iran after an hour-long Situation Room briefing on Tuesday. 

He said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “keep going.” 

“So far he’s doing a good job,” Trump added. 

He acknowledged that some of his supporters “are a little bit unhappy” about his posture toward Iran, but added that there are “some people that are very happy.” Trump further threw his support behind Israel’s actions: “All I’m doing is saying you can’t have a nuclear weapon. I’m trying to do it nicely, and then on day 61, I said, let’s go,” he said. 

The president said that Iran has contacted the White House to talk about resuming negotiations. But Trump suggested the time for negotiations may have passed.

“Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate. And I said, ‘Why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?’” Trump said. “Why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine. You would have had a country.”

Trump used the word “we” to describe the destruction of Iran’s air defense systems, without elaborating on the role the U.S. has played in assisting Israel. “We’ve totally captured the air,” Trump said Wednesday, following a post on Truth Social on Tuesday with similar language. 

In another Tuesday Truth Social post, Trump called for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.” He explained to the reporters, “That means I’ve had it. OK? I’ve had it. I give up. No more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there,” said Trump. 

He offered stridently critical comments about the Islamic Republic. 

“For 40 years they’ve been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel,’ death to anybody else that they didn’t like. They were bullies,” Trump said of the Iranian regime. “They were schoolyard bullies, and now they’re not bullies anymore, but we’ll see what happens. Look, nothing’s finished until it’s finished.” 

Trump warned again that Tehran cannot be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon — and intimated that Iran poses a direct threat to the United States.

“Is there anybody here that said it would be OK to have to have a hostile — very zealous, really — but to have a hostile country have a nuclear weapon that could destroy 25 miles, but much more than that, could destroy other nations, just by the breeze blowing the dust?” Trump asked. “That dust blows to other nations and they get decimated. This is just not a threat you can have. And we’ve been threatened by Iran for many years.”

At the end of the press conference, a reporter asked Trump for a message for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Good luck,” Trump said. When asked when his patience will run out, Trump responded simply: “It’s already run out.”

Amid growing speculation that the U.S. will become directly involved in Israel’s military campaign against Iran, President Donald Trump dismissed a public assessment by his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this year that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

“I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One en route home from the G7 Summit in Canada, which he left early to address the situation in the Middle East.

U.S. and Israeli leaders have emphasized in recent days that Iran was quickly increasing its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium in recent months, which would have allowed it to move quickly to a bomb. Some have also disputed Gabbard’s assessment, which was consistent with past assessments by Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend, “The intel[ligence] we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, that they were working on a secret plan to weaponize the uranium. They were marching very quickly. They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months, and certainly less than a year.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Iran was “very close to having enough pure weapons-grade uranium for several weapons” and that there were “signs” it was “once again exploring” weaponization.

Gabbard denied any dispute between herself and Trump and appeared to stick by her previous assessment, telling reporters, “What President Trump is saying is the same thing I said in my annual threat assessment in March to Congress.”

Trump also said he is “not looking for a ceasefire” between Israel and Iran, adding “we’re looking for better than a ceasefire.” He said he’s instead looking for “a real end … a complete give-up.”

Asked if he’s still interested in negotiating with Iran, Trump responded, “I don’t know. I’ve been negotiating. I told them to do the deal, they should have done the deal. Their cities have been blown to pieces and they’ve lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. … I’m not too much in a mood to negotiate now.”

Trump said he “may” attempt to send Vice President JD Vance and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to negotiate with Iran, but that will depend on “what happens when I get back” to Washington. Trump arrived in Washington early Tuesday morning.

But he also said he hopes that Iran’s nuclear program is “going to be wiped out long before” the U.S. would have to get involved in the campaign.

Asked about his call Monday night for the population of Tehran to evacuate, Trump denied any imminent threat adding, “I want people to be safe. That’s always possible. A thing like that could happen.”

He added later, “there’s a lot of bad things happening there. I think it’s safer for them to evacuate.”

The president said that U.S. troops in the region are well-protected, and that the U.S. would retaliate forcefully if Iran attacked U.S. troops.

President Donald Trump denied on Tuesday that he was attempting to facilitate “peace talks” with Iran as he returned to Washington to monitor the ongoing war between Israel and Iran.

Upon landing in the U.S. early Tuesday morning after prematurely leaving a meeting of G7 leaders in Canada — a move that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed to “what’s going on in the Middle East,” — Trump posted on Truth Social that he had “not reached out to Iran for ‘Peace Talks’ in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS! If they want to talk, they know how to reach me. They should have taken the deal that was on the table – Would have saved a lot of lives!!!”

On Sunday, however, Trump had written on Truth Social that “Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal” and “we will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place.”

While still aboard Air Force One, the president told reporters that he wanted “a real end” to Iran’s nuclear program and he would be monitoring developments between Israel and Iran from the White House Situation Room. 

He suggested that Israel was unlikely to slow its strikes on Iranian targets in the coming days, saying that, “You’re going to find out over the next two days. You’re going to find out. Nobody’s slowed up so far.” 

But the president stopped short of addressing whether the U.S. would join Israel’s strikes, saying he hopes the Iranian nuclear weapons program “is wiped out long before that.”

French President Emmanuel Macron suggested to reporters on Monday that Trump had departed the G7 earlier to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, saying that “the U.S. assured they will find a ceasefire and, since they can pressure Israel, things may change.”

Trump slammed Macron and denied his claims, posting on Truth Social, “Publicity seeking President Emmanuel Macron, of France, mistakenly said that I left the G7 Summit, in Canada, to go back to D.C. to work on a ‘cease fire’ between Israel and Iran. Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire.” Trump said he had departed for something “much bigger than that.”

While at the G7, Trump took an aggravated tone with Iran’s failure to come to an agreement, writing on Truth Social that “Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” 

Israel had issued a warning earlier that day to residents of Tehran to evacuate ahead of impending strikes on military infrastructure in the capital city. Israeli media reported that the U.S. had joined Israel in attacking Iran, which was denied by White House spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer. “American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests,” he said. Trump later told reporters that his call to evacuate was because he wants “people to be safe.”

On Monday night, Axios reported that Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is seeking a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to reach a nuclear deal and end the military action between Israel and Iran. Trump reportedly said at the G7 that the U.S. and Iran “are talking on the phone, but it is better to talk in person.”

A senior U.S. official told Axios that Trump sees Israel’s assumed reliance on the U.S.’ bunker-buster bombs to effectively target Iran’s nuclear facilities as a point of leverage to force Iran into a deal, lest the U.S. supply Israel the assistance it is seeking.  

Meanwhile, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country’s parliament is preparing a bill to potentially pull Iran out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.N.’s nuclear agency had recently ruled that Iran was violating its obligations under the treaty — which allows a country to utilize civilian nuclear power in exchange for a guarantee it will not pursue nuclear weaponization — for the first time in almost 20 years. 

Since the Israeli strike on Iran’s air defenses in October, Jerusalem has sought a green light, or something close to it, from Washington to strike the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. President Donald Trump, however, repeatedly told Israel to hold off as he pursued a diplomatic agreement with Tehran to stop its enrichment program. 

Now, after the Iranian nuclear program has continued apace and Trump has voiced frustration over Tehran’s intransigence, it seems that Jerusalem’s patience for diplomacy is running out.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad chief David Barnea will be meeting Trump’s top negotiator Steve Witkoff on Friday ahead of the sixth round of talks with Iran in Oman on Sunday “in an additional attempt to clarify Israel’s stance,” an official in Jerusalem said, amid persistent reports and strong indications that Israel is prepared to strike Iran.

After a call with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, Trump said that if Tehran does not agree to give up uranium enrichment, the situation will get “very, very dire.” On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that “there have been plenty of indications” that Iran is moving towards weaponization of its nuclear program, and Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the chief of CENTCOM, said that he presented Trump and Hegseth with numerous options to attack Iran if nuclear talks break down. 

Hours later, the State Department began to move some personnel out of Iraq and the military suggested that servicemembers’ families depart the Middle East, while the U.K. warned about a potential “escalation of military activity” in the region. Such evacuations are often the first step to reduce risk ahead of a large-scale military operation. 

Trump told reporters that the evacuations are happening because the Middle East “could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens.” More on this from Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod here.

Kurilla postponed his testimony before the Senate planned for Thursday. Staff at U.S. embassies and consulates throughout the Middle East were told to take safety precautions, and those stationed in Israel were told not to leave the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, Jerusalem or Beersheva.

Multiple news outlets published reports citing anonymous American officials that Israel is ready to strike Iran without help from the U.S. One possible reason for the timing — moving forward even as Washington and Tehran are set to enter a sixth round of talks on Sunday — is that Iran has reportedly begun to rebuild the air defenses that Israel destroyed last year. Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri reportedly said last month: “We are witnessing a remarkable improvement in the capability and readiness of the country’s air defense.”

Ynet’s well-sourced military analyst Yoav Zitun reported early Wednesday that Israel’s threat to attack Iran’s nuclear program is serious, and the most likely scenario is that Israel would strike Iran on its own but coordinate with the U.S. to receive air defense support. That scenario appears consistent with both Trump’s stated reticence to launch an attack, and the events that took place later that day.

In light of the negotiations set to continue on Sunday, some American analysts told JI that Washington could be acting as though it’s preparing for a possible attack to pressure Iran into concessions. 

If the latest moves successfully pressure Iran, Shira Efron, Israel Policy Forum’s director of policy research, told JI that she hoped it would be “an opportunity to get to a bigger, better deal.” 

However, in Israel, it looks like the moves towards a strike on Iran are serious. 

The fact that Netanyahu is expected to go on a two-day vacation in northern Israel this weekend and his son is getting married next week have been counterintuitively pointed to as indications that a strike is imminent — after all, the Hezbollah pager operation happened when the prime minister was in New York, and the strike on Syria’s nuclear facilities in 2007 took place when then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to go on vacation in Europe.

“Yesterday, I thought there was no way something is going to happen,” Efron said, but now, “I think we’re at the money time. It’s more serious than we had thought.” 

“Israel clearly no longer thinks an agreement can work, so it all depends on whether Trump told Israel it can do something before” negotiations between Iran and the U.S. break down, Efron said.

President Donald Trump on Monday criticized Iran’s continued demands on uranium enrichment as part of the terms of a nuclear deal with the United States.

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters from the State Dining Room about his phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day. Trump said the call went “very well” but declined to offer specifics beyond acknowledging that Iran was “the main topic.” He also added that the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon were also discussed. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the call lasted around 40 minutes. 

“They [Iran] are good negotiators, but they’re tough. Sometimes they can be too tough, that’s the problem. So we’re trying to make a deal so that there’s no destruction and death. We told them that. I have told them that. I hope that is the way it works out. It might not work out,” Trump said.

Asked what the main impediment to getting a deal with Iran is, Trump replied: “They’re just asking for things that you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up, you know what that is. They seek enrichment, we can’t have enrichment. We want just the opposite. And so far, they’re not there. I hate to say that because the alternative is a very, very dire one, but they’re not there. They have given us their thoughts on the deal and I’ve said it’s just not acceptable.”

Netanyahu convened a meeting of his security cabinet immediately following the Monday morning call, for which neither the White House nor the Prime Minister’s Office offered readouts. 

Nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran have been ongoing since March. Trump said that negotiators will meet next on Thursday. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday that Tehran plans to send the U.S. a counteroffer to the proposal the Trump administration presented in the “coming days.”

In response to the shooting that killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum last week, a bipartisan group of 46 House members wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday urging him to support expanded funding for key security programs in his full budget request to Congress, expected as soon as Friday afternoon.

While presidential budget requests are non-binding and are frequently modified by Congress, Trump’s requests are likely to be influential in the GOP-controlled Congress. And the appeals made by the lawmakers, in some cases, constitute calls for Trump to walk back funding cuts he proposed in the high-level budget toplines — known as a “skinny budget” — he submitted to Congress earlier this month.

Highlighting the “sharp rise in threats to the Jewish community,” the lawmakers — most of them Democrats — said that it is “imperative that the federal government take the necessary steps to increase funding for enhanced security measures” and “ensure that the Jewish community is equipped with the necessary tools to prevent loss of life in the case of an attack.”

The legislation calls on Trump to support $500 million in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, the same funding level that bipartisan groups of House and Senate members have urged Appropriations Committee leaders to support, calling the program “one of the most effective and critical programs for protecting the Jewish community and all faith-based communities from attack.” Jewish groups have called for funding to be increased to $1 billion.

Trump, in his “skinny budget,” had called for a reduction in funding for non-emergency grants at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a category that includes NSGP, but did not put forward a specific request for the program itself. In the past, presidents have not always made any specific funding requests for the NSGP, even in their more detailed budget outlines.

The letter outlines a series of examples that “demonstrate the direct return on investment for communities under threat” from the NSGP,  highlighting incidents in which security upgrades paid for by the program likely saved lives by stopping shooting attacks.

The lawmakers also called for Trump to “explore opportunities,” in collaboration with lawmakers, to provide an additional dedicated fund to allow faith-based organizations to hire security officers.

“Although Jewish institutions can use the NSGP to hire additional security personnel, the majority of Jewish institutions have either not been recipients of these grants or cannot afford the additional costs incurred,” the letter reads. “In light of recent events, it is more clear than ever that Jewish institutions are in desperate need of additional personnel support.”

The letter calls on Trump to support increased funding for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump called for a $545 million cut to the FBI’s budget in his “skinny budget”, pledging that the FBI would focus on counterintelligence and counterterrorism and that it would eliminate “duplicative intelligence activities.”

The letter emphasizes the FBI’s role in domestic terrorism investigations, which have been on the rise, and intelligence gathering and the FBI’s responsibility to report to Congress on domestic terrorism threats.

It calls for increased Department of Justice grants for local law enforcement to ensure that hate crimes are properly reported to local and federal law enforcement agencies, and specifically for grant programs to counter hate crimes “to ensure that antisemitic hate crimes are addressed and prosecuted in a timely manner” and their extent is fully understood. 

The “skinny budget” called for cutting $1 billion in DOJ grant programs, including “programs that focus on so-called hate crimes in clear violation of the First Amendment.”

The letter was led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and co-signed by Reps. Max Miller (R-OH), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Laura Gillen (D-NY), John Larson (D-CT), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Nikema Williams (D-GA), David Scott (D-GA), Wesley Bell (D-MO), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Dina Titus (D-NV), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Susie Lee (D-NV), Andre Carson (D-IN), Shontel Brown (D-OH), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Frederica Wilson (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Janelle Bynum (D-OR), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), Ted Lieu (D-CA), George Latimer (D-NY), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Julie Johnson (D-TX), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Marilyn Strickland (D-WA), Darren Soto (D-FL), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Brendan Boyle (D-PA), Bill Keating (D-MA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Benny Thompson (D-MI), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Brad Sherman (D-CA), David Kustoff (R-TN) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).

Miller and Kustoff, who are both Jewish, are the only Republican signatories.

President Donald Trump confirmed reports that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to proceed with plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities while the U.S. and Iran continue negotiations, saying that he told the Israeli leader a strike “is not appropriate right now.” 

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president responded to a question about the validity of the report by saying, “I’d like to be honest. Yes, I did.”

Pressed about the nature of the conversation, the president clarified, “It’s not a warning, I said I don’t think it’s appropriate. We’re having very good discussions with them [Iran] and I don’t think it’s appropriate right now.”

Trump suggested the U.S. may strike a “very strong document” with Iran “where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want but nobody’s getting killed. We can blow up a lab but nobody’s going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up, right? Two ways of doing it.”

He affirmed he told Netanyahu to hold off “because we’re very close to a solution. Now, that could change at any moment. It could change with a phone call. But right now I think they want to make a deal and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.”

He said a deal with Iran could be reached “over the next couple of weeks.”

Netanyahu, for his part, denied a New York Times report that he had been pressing for military action against Iran, which could upend the talks, calling it “fake news.” 

On the new U.S.-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza that went into effect this week, Trump said, “We’re dealing with the whole situation in Gaza. We’re getting food to the people.” 

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking beside Trump, added, “I think that we are on the precipice of sending out a new terms sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today. The president is going to review it. And I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution — temporary ceasefire and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution of that conflict.” Witkoff did not expand on the details of the “terms sheet” nor to whom it will be delivered. 

President Donald Trump said he’d be open to meeting directly with Iran’s president or Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but also suggested that the U.S. could attack Iran to keep it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, in an interview with Time magazine, released on Friday.

When asked if he would consider such a meeting, the president responded, “Sure.”

Pressed if he is worried Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could “drag you into a war” with Iran, Trump responded, “No. By the way, he may go into a war. But we’re not getting dragged in.” The president clarified that he did not mean the U.S. wouldn’t join a war if Israel initiates one: “You asked if he’d drag me in, like I’d go in unwillingly. No, I may go in very willingly if we can’t get a deal. If we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.”

Trump further denied reports that he had stopped Israel from carrying out plans to strike Iran, but affirmed that he is unsupportive of an attack without attempting negotiations. “It’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”

Asked why his administration is revoking visas from and beginning to deport hundreds of foreign students, Trump said, “Tremendous antisemitism at every one of those rallies.” The president said he’s unconcerned about “intimidating students or chilling free speech” through this policy: “They can protest, but they can’t destroy schools like they did with Columbia and others.”

He said he would “look into” having the Department of Justice provide evidence that Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national who was detained by plainclothes federal agents on March 25, has ties to Hamas as the government has alleged, but he’s “not aware of the particular incident.”

On Saudi-Israel normalization, the president said he is confident that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords, “and by the way, I think it will be full very quickly.”

A second Donald Trump administration would “do even more to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Israel,” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) said in a pitch to participants at a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Orthodox Union on Wednesday, highlighting the administration’s Mideast policy achievements.

Zeldin praised the Trump administration’s record on Israel, contrasting it with the way the Obama administration handled the U.S.-Israel relationship since he entered Congress in 2015. 

“Finally our country was starting to treat Israel like Israel and Iran like Iran, and I do not want to go back to my experience of my first term,” Zeldin, who is running for reelection in New York’s 1st congressional district,, told the group. “I would love to see us build on his progress.” 

“Israelis know that President Trump has had their back every step of the way,” Zeldin continued “Just think of the possibilities if President Trump has four more years in office. Because, with President Trump, he does not wake up the next day and look to just move on to the next unrelated battle. When he scores a win, he asks himself and asks his advisors, ‘What else can we do?’ That’s why we’ve had so many successes in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship — because the president wakes up the next day saying that he wants to accomplish even more.”

Earlier this week, the OU hosted a conversation with surrogates from former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. 

In a separate Zoom call hosted by the Biden campaign on Wednesday, Israeli-American mogul Haim Saban said Trump’s moves on Israel were largely symbolic. He compared the Jerusalem embassy move to a “bar mitzvah,” noting that only one country, Guatemala, followed the U.S. lead and moved its embassy to Jerusalem. 

Another Central American country, Honduras, is expected to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before the end of the year, according to a social media post from Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández last month. 

Saban was also skeptical that the president’s withdrawal from the Iran deal had bolstered Israel’s security.

“In the test of results — where are we from a security standpoint — we have Iran opening a new front against Israel from Syria and we have Iran with three times more enriched uranium,” Saban explained. “You draw your own conclusion.”

Saban, who has maintained close ties with Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and reportedly helped broker the recent normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, suggested that the president was only a participant of a “photo op” and did not deserve credit for the Abraham Accords. “All the credit should really be going here to Jared Kushner and [Mideast peace envoy] Avi Berkowitz, who worked really hard on it,” Saban said.

After staying on the sidelines during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Saban, a major Democratic donor and bundler, endorsed Biden in September, hosting a virtual fundraiser in support of the Democratic nominee.

Highlighting Biden’s longstanding support for Israel, Saban said, “The facts speak for themselves. Facts, you know, are a very stubborn thing. Look at the track record. Andall Jews in America [who] care about the U.S.-Israel alliance know that they can sleep peacefully as far as Israel’s security goes under a Biden presidency.”

In a new book looking back at his time in the military and in several presidential administrations, former national security advisor H.R. McMaster expounds on what he thought were “fundamental flaws” in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and why he tried to persuade President Donald Trump not to withdraw from the deal. 

In Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, released on Tuesday, McMaster called the original JCPOA negotiated by former President Barack Obama “an extreme case of strategic narcissism based on wishful thinking” that led to “self-delusion and, ultimately the deception of the American people.” 

Yet, when Trump wanted to make good on his campaign promise to leave the deal, McMaster made clear his opposition to withdrawing from the accord. In the book, McMaster explains that he wanted the U.S. to maintain leverage to punish Iran for its behavior on matters unrelated to the Iranian nuclear program and to get the parties in the agreement to fix the deal’s flaws. McMaster said he also wanted to avoid giving Tehran the opportunity to portray itself as a victim. But as he attempted to work on a comprehensive Iran strategy, McMaster wrote, Trump grew “impatient.” 

McMaster details how he intervened in former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s efforts to certify the deal in April 2017, and how he successfully lobbied the president to recertify the agreement over the next two 90-day deadlines as required under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. “We had created a window of opportunity for our allies to demonstrate the viability of staying in the deal while imposing costs on Iran,” McMaster writes. “That window closed soon after I departed the White House.” A month after McMaster left the administration, Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the deal. 

The former national security official accuses the Obama administration of ignoring Iran’s behavior in the region and avoiding confrontation in an effort to preserve the accord. According to McMaster, Obama officials “focused on selling the deal rather than subjecting it to scrutiny” by using a “red herring” talking point — the Iraq War — to pose “the false dilemma” of either supporting the deal or going to war with Iran. 

McMaster also offers his view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Trump peace plan announced in early 2020. Trump’s moves on Israel, he writes, “communicated support for Israel, but also removed incentives that might have been crucial in a future agreement.” While he described the rollout of the peace plan as “dead on arrival” due to lack of participation from Palestinian leaders, McMaster posits that the plan itself may at some point “help resurrect the possibility of a two-state solution.” 

The book itself is not a tell-all on the Trump administration. McMaster does not write about being excluded from Trump’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s trip to Israel, or his disputes with Trump and Jared Kushner. “This is not the book that most people wanted me to write… a tell-all about my experience in the White House to confirm their opinions of Donald Trump,” McMaster writes in his preface. “Although writing such a book might be lucrative, I did not believe that it would be useful or satisfactory for most readers.”

McMaster accuses the Russians and the alt-right movement of leading a campaign against him, under the hashtag #FireMcMaster, because they viewed him as a threat to their agenda of undermining America’s national security. McMaster writes that the attacks against him were “often inconsistent” in nature. “For example, one caricature on social media portrayed me as a puppet of billionaire George Soros and the Rothschild family (both of whom were frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories), while articles in the pseudo-media charged me and others on the NSC staff as being ‘anti-Israel’ and soft on Iran,” McMaster recalls.

White House Mideast peace envoy Avi Berkowitz had the honor of posting President Donald Trump’s tweet announcing a groundbreaking normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates last Thursday, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner revealed in an interview published on Wednesday. 

“[Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications] Dan Scavino was sitting in the back, and he let Avi push the button,” Kushner detailed in an interview with Ami Magazine, a weekly print-only publication widely read in the Orthodox community. “Avi has been working around the clock, and it’s really an incredible deal. He did a great job, so we all thought it would be an honor for him to do that.”

The presidential tweet came after a 15-minute phone call between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. “HUGE breakthrough today! Historic Peace Agreement between our two GREAT friends, Israel and the United Arab Emirates!” A follow up tweet by Trump read. 

Kushner shared with the publication what went on behind the scenes in the Oval Office ahead of Trump’s public statement: “We made the call in the Oval Office with a bunch of people on our team who wanted to be there. After we hung up, everyone in the room started to applaud. Then the president stood up and started clapping too, because he realized that we were all clapping for peace. As we were getting ready to bring in the media, we sent out the tweet which was all set up and ready to go. Dan Scavino was sitting in the back and Avi pushed the button. Then we brought the press in and shared what had happened with the world.”

The White House senior advisor noted that this was the first time Trump had given someone from his wider team the permission to tweet out from his account. “The president never lets anyone do it. It’s always either the president or Dan [Scavino],” Kushner noted. 

Berkowitz and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman also spoke to Ami, which featured them on the front cover as “the peacemakers.” 

The two seemed to offer differing views on the shelving of Netanyahu’s annexation plan as part of the U.A.E.-Israel accord. “The application of sovereignty to areas of the West Bank is something that our vision for peace accommodates, as we don’t fundamentally disagree with it,” Berkowitz told the magazine. “We believe that for the next few months it’s worthwhile to continue advancing the cause of peace and suspend the discussion about what the application of sovereignty and recognition by the United States would look like. We were in the middle of those discussions, and quite honestly we would still have some work to do should that path be opened up in the future.” 

The administration official suggested that Netanyahu “understands the historic achievement” of shifting gears away from his plan to annex parts of the West Bank and take the route of peace with the Arab world and “that for the foreseeable future the Israeli people are going to be excited about following that path.” 

Friedman, however, noted that the deal “doesn’t require that the sovereignty efforts that have begun be reversed. They’re just going to be delayed a little bit… We were on the path of support for the application of sovereignty to the settlements, and we were certainly moving along that path, when this opportunity came along. We had the intellectual flexibility to say, ‘Let’s shift gears a bit, because this is better.’” 

The ambassador also expressed his dismay at the ongoing political crisis in Israel. “The unity government hasn’t really created the unity I would have hoped for,” Friedman explained. “Jewish unity around the world is important, and Jewish unity within Israel is very important. I think we are still challenged in that regard, and because those political currents are still working their way through the system, those who see political advantages or disadvantages to making strong statements will continue to do so.”

This post has been updated to clarify Ambassador Friedman’s remarks on Israel’s political crisis.

Tony Gonzales recently spent two years in Washington, working as a Department of Defense legislative fellow for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Now, the former Navy master chief petty officer is looking to return to the nation’s capital — as the congressman representing Texas’s 23rd congressional district.

Gonzales, who comes armed with the endorsement of President Donald Trump, is likely to win Tuesday’s runoff against another veteran, Raul Reyes. Gonzales came out on top in the March 3 primary, taking 28% of the vote to Reyes’ 23%. The winner will go up against Gina Ortiz Jones, who handily beat her opponents in the Democratic primary.

Jones narrowly lost her 2018 bid against Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who announced last August that he would not be seeking a fourth term. This year, Jones is favored to win in the district that The Cook Political Report rates as “Lean Democratic.”

But Gonzales is up for the challenge, telling Jewish Insider that he can deliver a victory against Jones in November where Reyes cannot. “I have the experience of being on Capitol Hill, drafting legislation, staffing, hearings, doing constituent services,” he said. 

Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, agreed that Reyes would be unlikely to win in November.

“Whoever wins [the runoff]… will have a real uphill struggle against Gina Ortiz Jones,” Jones continued. “It’s going to be really tough for Gonzales to win that seat.”

But Gonzales is optimistic that voters in the district, which has flipped between Democratic and Republican control in recent years but was held by Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla for 14 years, will turn out for him in November. He pointed out that he’s a Hispanic candidate running in a majority-Hispanic district, an advantage over Jones.

***

Should he win, Gonzales would bring to Congress a font of Middle East policy expertise. While in the military, he was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. And while working for Rubio, he focused on defense, national security and intelligence issues, with a particular focus on the Middle East.

“I spent my entire adult life basically at war,” he said. “A big part of my message is taking care of veterans, on one hand. The other aspect of it is for America to be firm. I believe in peace through strength.”

In 2018, as a national security fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Gonzales visited Israel, which he said helped shape his view of the region and understanding of the geopolitical situation.

“I read about the Golan Heights and studied it and I understood its strategic importance,” he said, explaining that seeing the situation on the ground allowed him to realize that the area was more than a military interest. “But when you visit it, the part that is left out is there’s this amazing winery just miles from the Golan Heights. So in my eyes, yeah, of course Israel would never give up that area.”

Julia Schulman, senior director of special projects at FDD, told JI, “Gina and Tony are both members of FDD’s non-partisan national security alumni network. Both are dedicated public servants who were actively engaged in our programming. Both have exciting careers ahead and we look forward to seeing how they continue to serve our country.”

Gonzales said he does not believe the U.S. should dictate any specific peace plan for the region, nor should it dictate whether Israel should be allowed to unilaterally annex portions of the West Bank.

“The Israelis and the Palestinians, I think, should lead the way,” he said. “I think [America’s] role is to bring those [actors] together and open up a dialogue, not necessarily dictate what that peace process should be like.”

He added, however, “my experience in the military has taught me that you really can’t have peace unless you have partners that are willing to have that discussion. So I think it starts there.”

Although Gonzales believes that peace negotiations also are the best way to resolve the U.S. conflict with Iran, he did not support the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with the regime.

“I’d love nothing more than Iran to come to the negotiating table and have a dialogue and a discussion. That’s, I believe, how we solve a long-term solution,” he said. “In the meantime, though, that region of the world views strength through power.”

In this sense, Gonzales said, the Trump administration’s tougher posture toward Iran, including the strike which killed Gen. Qassem Solemaini, has been a net positive.

Gonzales — who was a Navy cryptologist — said Iran, as well as Russia and China, pose major cyber threats to the U.S., including U.S. elections.

“Our greatest [external] adversaries are China, Russia and Iran,” he said. “The number one thing is having the dialogue and saying, ‘Yes, China is trying to impact our elections. Yes, Russia is trying to impact our elections. Yes, Iran and others are trying to impact our elections.’ Why? Because they’re our adversaries. They’re trying to undermine us. And I think just being able to say that is already a win that we don’t have on Capitol Hill.”

***

What was anticipated to be a fairly quiet runoff in southwestern Texas between two military veterans has become the site of a high-stakes clash between major players in the national GOP. 

Gonzales has the support of Trump, Hurd and other GOP leaders, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) broke with the party to support Reyes, boosting him with a massive ad campaign that raised eyebrows at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

And on the eve of the primary, Trump’s campaign sent a strongly worded letter to Reyes’s campaign, admonishing him for using the president’s name and image on a mailer. 

“President Trump and his campaign do not support your candidacy in TX-23’s July 14 runoff primary,” Trump campaign executive director Michael Glassner said in the letter, which was first reported by Politico. “Your campaign’s efforts to make voters believe otherwise are deceptive and unfair.”

Reyes’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Jones said Trump’s endorsement helped shore up Gonzales’ campaign by shielding him from Reyes’s claims that he’s too much of an establishment Republican.

“I think Gonzales is going to [win that runoff] pretty easily,” Jones told JI.

But if he doesn’t, Jones predicts the race will drop off the radar of the GOP. “If Reyes wins, I would expect national Republicans to pull the plug on [TX]23,” Jones told JI. “If Reyes wins, [the district] will cease to be a real priority.”