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Donald Trump has threatened to launch fresh strikes against Iran if it is found to be rebuilding its nuclear programme, as he held talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump also said Hamas has a “very short period of time to disarm” in Gaza, where a US-brokered ceasefire has largely held since October, or the Palestinian militants would have “hell to pay”.
The warnings come as the US president’s efforts to broker peace across the Middle East have faltered. The implementation of the US peace plan in Gaza has stalled and tension with Iran appears to be rising.
Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme was “obliterated” after the US briefly joined Israel’s 12-day war with the Islamic republic in June, before declaring an end to the conflict.
“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again and, if they are, we have to knock them down . . . We’ll knock the hell out of them,” Trump told reporters on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Standing beside Netanyahu, Trump said: “Iran may be behaving badly. It hasn’t been confirmed. But if it’s confirmed . . . the consequences will be very powerful.”
The shift in Trump’s tone marks a victory for Netanyahu, whose government has argued that Israel’s regional adversaries, including Hamas and Iran, are uninterested in the peace proposals that Trump is pushing.
Israel alleges that Iran is rapidly rebuilding its ballistic missile arsenal. Netanyahu has also suggested that the Trump administration’s push to implement the next phase of Trump’s Gaza peace plan is unrealistic because Hamas is unwilling to disarm.
Trump’s peace plan has faltered over issues such as Hamas’s disarmament, the deployment of an international security force and Gaza’s future governance.
The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which ended two years of heavy Israeli bombardment in the Palestinian territory, has been tested by near daily eruptions of fighting and Israeli strikes.
Palestinian health officials say more than 400 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire.
US officials have insisted that “phase 2” of Trump’s 20-point peace plan will begin in January.
That would include the unveiling of the international “board of peace” and an executive committee to oversee the strip, a Palestinian technocratic committee on the ground to handle daily governance, as well as the deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force.
Israeli troops — which at present still hold about half of Gaza — would gradually withdraw as a multinational force enters the strip to monitor Hamas’s disarmament and the transition to postwar reconstruction.
Israeli officials worried ahead of the meeting that Trump might try to push Netanyahu to agree to further troop withdrawals.
But as the two leaders emerged from their meeting, Trump declined to talk about an Israeli withdrawal, and said Hamas was failing to comply with the deal.
“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel is doing,” Trump said when asked about the pace of implementation. “They’ve lived up to the plan.”
Israeli officials have dismissed the likelihood that an international or Palestinian security force would undertake Hamas’s disarmament.
Trump said Monday that other countries “will come in and do it”, insisting that dozens of governments had backed his 20-point peace plan. But no country has committed to sending troops into Gaza.
Trump said he and the Israeli leader spoke at length about the occupied West Bank, where the US has opposed Israel’s rapid expansion of Jewish settlements.
“I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100% but we will come to a conclusion on the West Bank,” Trump said, adding that Netanyahu “will do the right thing”.
Trump also urged Netanyahu to “get along” with Syria and its new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who he said “is working very hard to do a good job”.
Israel has continued to occupy additional swaths of south-western Syria, despite US pressure to withdraw, since the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad late last year, as it seeks to bolster its security.
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