Vice President JD Vance said at a press briefing at the White House on Thursday that members of the Israeli government should realize that President Trump is the only head of state in the world who is still “sympathetic” to Israel.
The vice president made the comments when discussing Israeli officials who have been harshly critical of the Memorandum of Understanding President Trump signed with Iran on Wednesday.
“I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance said.
Vance also pointed to the fact that Israel is extremely reliant on US military support. “The other thing that I would say is that over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars,” he said.
In an interview with The New York Times, published on Thursday, Vance specifically called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, both of whom have rejected the US-Iran MoU.
“And I guess my response to them would be: What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have,” Vance said.
The US vice president added that the Israeli ministers should “give a little bit of credit to the United States of America, which I think has been an incredible partner for the Israeli government for a long time.”
While Vance had some harsh words for Israeli officials, there’s still no sign that the Trump administration is willing to leverage military aid to Israel or threaten to cut it off to get Israel to end its war in southern Lebanon, which has continued, though at a lower intensity, since the announcement of the US-Iran MoU, which calls for a complete halt to the conflict.
Iranian officials have said that the MoU hinges on ending the Lebanon was and an Israeli withdrawal from the country. “The end of the war includes the end of occupation. Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories they occupied during this war, the war will have not been fully brought to an end,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said earlier this week.
