Trump claims Israel ‘would not exist’ without him, says US is the 'one with guns'
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Trump claims Israel ‘would not exist’ without him, says US is the 'one with guns'")
US President Donald Trump (R) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrive to speak to journalists during a joint press conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 29, 2025. Photograph: (AFP)
Donald Trump claimed that Israel “would not exist today” without his decision to withdraw from the JCPOA. He also argued that Iran would have used a nuclear weapon against Israel if the sites had not been destroyed.
US President Donald Trump said that his foreign policy decision made it possible for Israel to exist. He claimed that Obama's JCPOA was a “road to a nuclear weapon”. Trump claimed that if the US B2 bombers did not attack the nuclear facilities in June 2025, then Iran would have “eviscerated” Israel. Speaking to Axios, Trump said that Israel has a “lot of respect” for him, but Netanyahu has to be kept “sane”.
“I had to stop them because if they had a nuclear weapon, they would use it. And you want to see bedlam, let them blow up a couple of cities someplace, like they would've blown up Israel. If it weren't for me, Israel would not exist today because I terminated the Barack Hussein Obama deal, the JCPOA, which was a road to a nuclear weapon,” said Trump.
He claimed that with the JCPOA, Iran would have had nuclear weapons five years ago, and they would have blown up Israel within the first week. These aggressive rhetorical statements mark an aggressive approach from Washington towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump, in his interview with Axios, repeatedly asserted Israel's dependence on US military capability. He said, asserting dominance over his ally, that Netanyahu worked well with him, but the US is the “one with guns”.
"All that enriched material, they were one month away. It was right there. They could have walked down. They can't do that anymore. You know, the B2 bombers did their job with those great pilots. That ceiling, the mountain collapsed on top of it. It collapsed on top of it. Had we not hit them, they would've had a nuclear weapon. They would've used it on Israel," said Trump.
He further went on to express his shock at Iran targeting the Gulf countries, eventhough most of the military analysts have suggested that Iran would retaliate. But President Donald Trump's shock further shocked intelligence officials and diplomatic analysts, who categorically rejected Trump's assessment, saying that pre-war intelligence explicitly listed strikes on regional Gulf capitals as a highly probable outcome.
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Trump also bragged about assassinating Soleimani, whom he called a “mad genius” and “father of the roadside bombing”. Trump used the high-profile targeted killing to justify his current "victory" and the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. He claimed that Iran failed to replicate the general, and it laid the groundwork for US “victory”.
