This Wednesday’s press conference at the G7 was far from the first time that US President Donald Trump has recalled how Israel purportedly pulled out of a 2020 joint operation to kill top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Trump has harked back countless times — after his first term in office and later as he began campaigning to return to the White House — about how frustrated he was at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly leaving the US to take out Soleimani on its own.
He still regularly touts the success of that operation, but for the past two-plus years stopped mentioning that Israel allegedly decided not to take part at the last minute. It’s a claim Jerusalem has never confirmed and one that contradicts reporting that Israel actually provided intelligence used in killing Soleimani.
Trump stopped bringing up the supposed Israeli non-role in the operation in early 2024 when he became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. Shortly thereafter, he held his first meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since lashing out at the premier for congratulating Joe Biden on winning the 2020 US presidential election.
As the 2024 election approached — and even more so after he won that race — Trump warmed up to Netanyahu significantly, apparently concluding that a close relationship to Israel and its leader would benefit him politically. Those ties became tighter than ever this year, when the US and Israel jointly launched a war with Iran.
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Now, Trump’s return to his grievance about Soleimani is one more indication that a rift is again forming between the two men. His rehashing of an old frustration with Israel can easily be tied to newfound disputes over policy that didn’t exist during his first year and a half back in office, but this friction also seems to correlate with how the center of gravity has shifted away from Israel within the Republican Party.
Tying his fate to the Jewish state may have been beneficial for Trump as the GOP presidential nominee just two years ago, in the relatively fresh aftermath of the Hamas invasion and massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. But perceptions of Israel among Republicans — particularly younger ones — have declined since, as Jerusalem has made land grabs in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, and as Israel’s fight against Hezbollah threatens to derail US-Iran peace talks.
Republican presidential candidate former US president Donald Trump meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate, July 26, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Praising, then clashing with, a ‘wartime prime minister’
When this reporter asked Trump in a March phone interview to explain how he managed to get past his previously stated beliefs that Netanyahu was disloyal and uninterested in peace, the US president dodged the question completely and reiterated his newfound conviction that Netanyahu is a “wartime prime minister” who, together with him, saved Israel from annihilation and should therefore be pardoned on all corruption charges.
Trump had been gushing about Netanyahu for months, as his relationship with Israel reached new heights through the US-brokered January and October 2025 Gaza ceasefire deals that brought back all of the remaining living and dead hostages from Hamas captivity, and through the military operations against Iran in June 2025 and this year, which the US conducted alongside Israel.
But US and Israeli interests eventually diverged in the recent Iran war, as Trump sought to avoid domestic economic fallout ahead of the November midterm elections, while Netanyahu pushed to keep the conflict going and inflict as much damage as possible on the Iranian regime.
The resulting collision, in particular, had to do with Lebanon, which Iran insisted on tying to the broader ceasefire that the US was trying to negotiate as it sought to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel argued that the conflicts shouldn’t be linked and that the IDF should be given free rein to go after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group firing missiles across its northern border.
Trump, however, has spoken about Lebanon as a sideshow to the fight with Iran, describing it at the G7 as a “pinprick” that threatened his negotiations with Tehran.
Against that backdrop, the IDF’s deadly strikes against Hezbollah deep inside Lebanese territory led Trump to voice concerns akin to those heard from Democratic administrations frustrated over what they viewed as Israel’s insufficient regard for civilians caught in harm’s way.
“Israel is fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed,” Trump said earlier this week. “You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody. Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses. And they’re not all Hezbollah — that I can tell y…
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