Axios reported on Sunday that White House officials were frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to Israel’s recent airstrikes on Damascus, which came as the US was urging Israel not to bomb Syria.
“Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time,” one White House official told the outlet. “This could undermine what Trump is trying to do.”
The Trump administration has been pushing for a normalization deal between Israel and the new Syrian government, which is led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, who took over Damascus in December 2024 with his rebranded group of jihadists, known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Another White House official pointed to the Israeli tank shelling of the sole Catholic church in Gaza, which killed three Christians. “The feeling is that every day there is something new. What the f***?” the official said. A third official said that Netanyahu is “sometimes like a child who just doesn’t behave.”
The report noted that it was unclear whether President Trump shared the officials’ frustration with Netanyahu. Trump has recently shown strong support for Netanyahu by calling for an end to his corruption trial and hosting the Israeli leader at the White House for the third time within six months.
A senior Israeli official said that Tel Aviv was surprised by the US’s unhappiness over the Syria strikes since Trump had encouraged Israel to hold Syrian territory it had captured and hadn’t previously criticized Israel’s interventions in the country. Israel celebrated the regime change that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but used the HTS takeover as a pretext to invade southern Syria.
The Axios report didn’t indicate that US officials were frustrated by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the daily massacres of women, children, and unarmed Palestinian civilians seeking aid. There was also no indication that the US was considering ending or leveraging military aid to Israel, which Israel relies on to sustain its military operations across the region.
