Trump Warned Bibi to ‘Be Careful’ Or You ‘Will Be On Your Own’

President Donald Trump warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend to “be careful,” or Israel may “very soon” be on its own.

Trump explained the contents of his conversations with Netanyahu with Axios’s Barak Ravid and made clear he explicitly warned Netanyahu not to further escalate the war with Iran. Israel bombed Hezbollah targets in Beirut over the weekend, which led to waves of missile attacks from Iran on Israel. Iran has threatened to return to full-scale conflict if Israel bombs Hezbollah, a terror group, any further in Lebanon.

“I said, ‘Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon,'” Trump told Ravid. Last week, Trump and Netanyahu sparred on the phone, with Trump telling the Israeli leader “you are f*cking crazy.” Axios reported that the tone of their more recent calls has been much calmer and more polite.

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond reported from Tel Aviv on the latest developments in the conflict.

“Last night, President Trump did not succeed in his earlier conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu in getting Israel to hold off and not retaliate against Iran. We saw overnight two waves of Israeli strikes inside Iran, one targeting military sites, the other targeting a petrochemical facility, after Iran fired multiple barrages of ballistic missiles,” explained Diamond, adding:

But then earlier today, the two got on the phone once again, and President Trump again urged Prime Minister Netanyahu not to retaliate further against Iran. And despite the fact that Israel, according to these sources, had several additional waves of attacks planned in Iran — bigger even than what we saw overnight — the Israeli Prime Minister seems to have called those attacks off at the urging of the U.S. President. And then this is what Prime Minister Netanyahu told the public.

CNN then showed a clip of Netanyahu addressing Israel, saying, “At the moment, the fire has ceased, because after we struck the terror regime in Tehran, it stopped attacking us. If the terror regime in Iran makes the mistake of attacking us again, we will respond with force.”

“And so, while we have now reached a point where both Israel and Iran have said that they will not attack each other any further for the time being, there is still hanging in the air this very real possibility of this conflict resuming once again. And that’s not only because of what you just heard from the Israeli Prime Minister, but especially because of what we’ve heard from Iran,” Diamond reported, adding:

Iran’s military command said in a statement that should Israel attack Iran, but also should Israel carry out additional attacks in southern Lebanon, then Iran will retaliate — and will retaliate with more force than what we saw in these initial waves of ballistic missile attacks over the last 24 hours. That is a very new and very concerning new red line from Iran, because it goes much further than what had been heard before.

Iran previously warned that should Israel strike Beirut, the Lebanese capital, then Iran would strike Israel — and that’s exactly what happened last night. And so now, for Iran to be saying that this red line has moved, that it’s now about southern Lebanon, presents the real possibility of this conflict resuming, because Israel is vowing to intensify its attacks against the Iranian proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, whose stronghold is indeed in southern Lebanon. And so this remains a very tense situation. That being said, in Israel, the restrictions on activity have been largely removed across the country. Students are expected to go back to school tomorrow after classes were canceled today, but again, Israel’s military and the region at large remains on a heightened state of alert, again, because of these threats as they relate to Lebanon.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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