Trump Tells Fox Hosts Israel Would ‘Not Exist’ Today If He Wasn’t President

President Donald Trump told Fox & Friends co-hosts on Tuesday that Israel “would not exist” if he were not in the White House as he bashed his predecessors’ handling of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and touted his own record.

Speaking by phone, just hours before hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Trump argued Tehran had “effectively” accepted it could not obtain a nuclear weapon.

“They cannot have a nuclear weapon, it’s very simple, and they have agreed to that essentially. We have to get them to make it formal, but they’ve agreed to it and why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they?” Trump said.

Co-host Brian Kilmeade then noted the difficulty successive administrations had faced in dealing with Iran over the past five decades.

Trump responded by criticizing his predecessors, arguing they had failed to confront Tehran while singling out former President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran for renewed attack.

“For 50 years, other presidents should have done this job,” Trump said, claiming that Obama had “paid them billions of dollars” and describing the 2015 agreement as “the worst, dumbest deal” that amounted to “the road to a nuclear weapon.”

The president also pointed to the 2020 U.S. strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, saying the operation he’d ordered had weakened Tehran, before claiming recent U.S. military action under his second administration had also prevented Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We stopped the nuclear with the B-2, and I stopped it also when I terminated that horrible deal made by Obama,” Trump said.

“If they had a nuclear weapon, you would not have Israel around,” he said, adding: “Frankly, if I weren’t president of the United States, Israel today would not exist.”

Watch above via Fox News.

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