U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his announcement that the IDF would strike Beirut, Axios reported, citing three U.S. officials. According to two of the sources, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” and accused him of ingratitude during their phone call, before ordering him to cancel the strikes.
One official said Trump told Netanyahu that bombing the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel around the world. Two sources said Trump claimed he had helped “keep Netanyahu out of jail,” a reference to his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Summarizing Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. official said: “You're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
1 View gallery
US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: ATTA KENARE / AFP, JOE RAEDLE / AFP, Anna Moneymaker/AFP)
A second source briefed on the call said Trump was “pissed” and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: “What the fuck are you doing?”
Axios said one U.S. official noted that Trump knew Hezbollah had been firing at Israel and that Israel needed to defend itself, but felt in recent days that Netanyahu was escalating in a disproportionate way. Another source said Trump was concerned that Israel had killed so many Lebanese civilians and objected to Israel knocking down buildings in Beirut to kill a single Hezbollah commander.
Netanyahu and Trump spoke Monday night, seven hours after the prime minister instructed the military to strike Beirut’s Dahiyeh district. Despite the order, Israel did not attack the Lebanese capital. Trump effectively announced a ceasefire based on the principle of “quiet will be met with quiet.” Lebanese officials later said that under the arrangement, the IDF would not strike Dahiyeh while Hezbollah would not attack Israeli communities. Netanyahu, in effect, confirmed the arrangement in his first response, two hours after Trump’s announcement.
“I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not stop attacking our cities and citizens, Israel will strike terror targets in Beirut. Our position remains the same,” Netanyahu said Monday night, without addressing the fact that Israel did not strike Dahiyeh after Hezbollah’s previous attacks, despite his order to do so. “At the same time, the IDF will continue operating as planned in southern Lebanon.”
The Netanyahu-Trump call took place shortly after Iran announced it was suspending negotiations with the United States over the strikes in Lebanon and issued a warning to residents of northern Israel: “Israel will strike Dahiyeh? We warn you to leave so you are not harmed.” Opposition leader Yair Lapid quickly responded to Trump’s ceasefire post on X, writing: “A full-on protectorate state.”
But despite the understandings, sirens continued to sound in northern Israel Monday night and into the early morning. After three hours of quiet following Trump’s post, alerts sounded in the Galilee Panhandle and then in the western Galilee, including Shlomi. The IDF said a rocket fell near Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Under the understandings, Hezbollah apparently could still fire at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, raising the question of whether fire at forces inside Israeli territory was also covered by the arrangement. Overnight, sirens sounded in dozens of northern communities and two launches crossing from Lebanon were intercepted. At the same time, a drone exploded near the border.
Amid the continued fighting, Trump told ABC News he believes an agreement to extend the ceasefire with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz “could happen over the next week.” In a phone call with the network’s reporter, Trump said: “Looking good, looking good. There was a little glitch today, but I turned that one around very quickly, as you probably noticed earlier. So, I spoke with Hezbollah, and I said no shooting, and I talked to Bibi, and said, no shooting, and they both stopped shooting each other.”
American commentator Mark Levin, a Trump ally, criticized the Axios leak in a post on X, writing that the person who leaked the story “did a grave disservice to our country, to our president, to Israel, and to Israel’s prime minister.”
Levin said the leak “provided support to the Iranian regime and its Hezbollah proxy,” adding that Tehran would view the United States as “weak and desperate for a deal — even coming to Hezbollah’s defense.” He said Israelis would also be furious because “the missiles are aimed at them, not Washington.”
Levin added that what the leakers apparently saw as “a devastating political hit on Netanyahu” had caused “much damage to us and our military and our diplomatic strategy.” He said that if the leakers or others believe Israel “should abandon its survival for some deal, they will have a very hard lesson to learn.”
“If the substance of the call is accurate, it is bad enough in my view,” Levin wrote, adding that the leak “was a violation of federal law” and asking whether the FBI would investigate who was behind it.
First published: 07:39, 06.02.26