Former U. S. President Donald Trump expected Israel to play a more active role in the assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, a former official told Axios News in a report published Wednesday.
The source, who was a senior Trump administration official, said then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “ready to fight Iran to the last American soldier,” the fallout from the killing of the Quds Force commander.
Trump, speaking to journalist Barak Ravid in July, said he would give details, but that he “was very disappointed that Israel had anything to do with this event. “
“People will hear it at that time,” he added.
Trump spoke with Ravid for the journalist’s new Hebrew-language book, “Trump’s Peace,” about normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, which were negotiated with the Trump administration.
Israel reportedly provided information to the US military as the operation was underway, including tracking Soleimani’s phone, and handing the Americans other key intelligence details.
However, an Israeli defense official told Axios that Israel was proposing a more active role for its forces in the killing, but that, instead, the United States insisted on exhausting the drone strike.
A former White House official told the news site that Trump felt as if Netanyahu had used him, and wasn’t convinced when the Israeli prime minister tried to make amends during the signing of the normalization deals at the White House in September 2020.
Netanyahu had forged close relations with Trump and his administration, which reversed decades of U. S. policy by detecting Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and opposition to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.
But recently revealed comments showed Trump lashing out at the former prime minister, telling Ravid that no one had helped Netanyahu more than he did, and that he therefore considered it a betrayal when Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his election victory, even as Trump falsely claimed that the election had been stolen.
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