Donald Trump has been working overtime to get a nuclear deal with Iran across the finish line.
Netanyahu nearly blew the whole thing up.
And what Trump said to Bibi in a private phone call just leaked out, and it’s the kind of thing you don’t forget.
Trump Confirms the Explosive Call
Axios broke the story first, citing two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call, reporting that Trump unloaded on Netanyahu in a profanity-filled phone conversation after Israel threatened to bomb Hezbollah targets in the Dahieh district of Beirut.
According to a U.S. official quoted by Axios, Trump told the Israeli Prime Minister: “You’re f***ing 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.”
A second source briefed on the call told Axios that Trump was “pissed” and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: “What the f*** are you doing?”
Trump himself confirmed the exchange in an interview on the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast with Miranda Devine. When asked directly whether he spoke to Netanyahu in those terms, Trump said, “I did.”
“I wouldn’t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know,” Trump said. “At some point I said, ‘Bibi, we gotta stop this, we gotta stop it.'”
One official told Axios this was one of Trump’s worst calls with Netanyahu since he returned to office.
Why Lebanon Almost Wrecked the Iran Deal
The stakes here go well beyond a spat between two allied leaders. Trump has been pushing hard to reach a preliminary agreement with Iran, and Netanyahu’s decision to escalate in Lebanon very nearly torched those negotiations entirely.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi put it bluntly, warning that Israel’s actions in Lebanon amounted to a violation of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and that “its violation on one front is a violation of the cease-fire on all fronts.” Iranian officials told the semi-official Tasnim News Agency that no talks with the U.S. would take place until Israel stopped its attacks in Lebanon.
According to Axios, a U.S. official said Trump knew Hezbollah had been shooting at Israel and acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, but felt Netanyahu had been escalating in a disproportionate way in recent days. Another U.S. official said Trump was troubled by the civilian death toll in Lebanon and took issue with Israel demolishing entire buildings to take out a single Hezbollah commander.
Trump had told ABC News, referring to the situation, “There was a little glitch today, but I turned that one around very quickly, as you probably noticed earlier.”
That’s a fairly restrained way to describe what, by all accounts, was a near-meltdown in U.S.-Israeli relations.
What Trump Pulled Off
And here’s where the story gets interesting, because Trump didn’t just yell at Netanyahu. He actually got results.
After the call, Trump posted on Truth Social that the Iran talks were “continuing, at a rapid pace.” He also announced a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and separately held a call with Hezbollah representatives. The Lebanese Embassy in Washington announced that Hezbollah accepted a U.S. proposal for a “mutual cessation of attacks” and that Trump had told the Lebanese ambassador he had secured Netanyahu’s agreement.
The deal, proposed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, called for Israel to suspend its planned attacks on Beirut in exchange for Hezbollah halting its attacks on Israel.
According to a second U.S. official cited by Axios, Trump had “steamrolled” Netanyahu on the call, with Netanyahu reportedly responding, “OK, OK, just make sure everything is taken care of.”
Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, tried to smooth things over publicly, telling reporters outside the State Department: “Taking out one bleep from all those conversations and making that the hallmark of their relationship is a mistake.” He added, “Lovers have spats. They may have had a little lover’s spat this week, that’s okay.”
Netanyahu himself, when asked about the call in a CNBC interview, declined to get into specifics. “Well, I’m not going to get into details of our conversations. We’ve had thousands of — well, a lot, a lot of them — and if you think this is a crisis, you should be in some other conversations, but we’ve always found a way.”
Trump Keeps Saying the Relationship Is Fine. That May Actually Be True.
Trump went out of his way to insist the alliance is intact. “I like Bibi a lot, and I’ve worked very well with him,” he said. “I’m a wartime president, and he’s a wartime prime minister, very important part of the world. And I think we’ve done very well.”
And it’s worth taking that seriously. These two men have been through a lot together. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the U.S. embassy there, supported Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu told him in 2020: “You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
But the relationship has had real fractures before. The worst came after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, when Netanyahu quickly congratulated Joe Biden on his victory. Trump felt genuinely betrayed by that, telling Israeli journalist Barak Ravid: “The first person who congratulated [Joe Biden] was Bibi [Benjamin] Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with… Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”
They patched things up. And Trump’s confirmation that he dressed down Netanyahu over Lebanon, followed almost immediately by his insistence that the two “have done well together,” suggests this is just how these two operate. Loud disagreements, back-channel fixes, and then back to business.
Still, the underlying tension is real. Netanyahu faces a corruption trial at home and serious domestic political pressure from his far-right coalition partners, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who publicly told Netanyahu it was necessary to strike Hezbollah and that “this is the time to tell our friend, President Trump — ‘no.'”
Trump, for his part, is trying to close a deal with Iran that could reshape the entire region. He told Iran directly: “It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer.”
That’s the real story here. Trump is trying to end a war, lock in a nuclear agreement, and keep a volatile ally from lighting the whole thing on fire — all at the same time. Whether that holds together is a question nobody in Washington, Jerusalem, or Tehran can answer right now.
Sources: Breitbart News; Axios; New York Post/Pod Force One; Time Magazine; Euronews; CNN