Former President Donald Trump suggested to Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya News on Sunday that his sources from Lebanon were telling him that Israel needed to continue its war against Hezbollah and defeat the Iran-backed terrorist organization.
Interviewer Nadia Bilbassy-Charters asked Trump whether he believed there was a chance for negotiation with the killing of Hamas leader Yayha Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the past few weeks.
He replied: “I do I think they’ve [Hezbollah] even suggested it, and not from strength — they’ve suggested it. But you know, interestingly, I’ve spoken to people from Lebanon, and they wanted to go as far as — I was very,
actually surprised.”
Bilbassy-Charters interjected to note that “a million people have been forced to leave their homes, thousands have been killed,” and that many believed only Trump could stop the war, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would listen to him.
Trump agreed, saying he had good relations with many leaders in the region.
Hezbollah is backed by Iran, and its local power base is in the Shia population in Lebanon. It is deeply resented by many other groups in Lebanon for dragging the country into a war with Israel.
Trump repeated some observations that he has made in past commentary on the Middle East — such as that the terror attack of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza would never have happened if he had still been in office.
He also said that Netanyahu “has to” hit Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil facilities in response to the regime’s missile attacks on Israel. He repeated an observation that the best advice in foreign policy was to do the opposite of what President Joe Biden suggested.
He added, however, that he still believed in good relations with the Iranian people in the long run.
He was less optimistic about the fate of the 101 Israeli hostages still being held by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists in Gaza. While he would have insisted that the hostages be released “immediately,” he said, many were likely dead.
Trump said he believed that the Middle East would return to the pursuit of a lasting peace. “I feel really, truly, confident it’s going to happen, and I believe it’s going to happen soon. We’ll see what happens with the election.”
He said that he would expand the Abraham Accords — which Saudi Arabia was close to joining before Trump left office. The Biden administration tried to negotiate a Saudi-Israeli peace before October 7 — but also reportedly blocked a deal because it did not include a Palestinian state, which had not been a high Saudi priority in negotiations.
Trump’s next grandchild, Bilbassy-Charters noted, will be “half-Arab, or Lebanese.” (Tiffany Trump is married to Lebanese-American Christian business scion Michael Boulos, and is pregnant with the couple’s first child.) Trump also has Jewish grandchildren through his daughter, Ivanka, who converted to Judaism and married Jared Kushner.
Trump praised the ingenuity and achievements of the Lebanese people, sharing his hope for eventual peace.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.