Ex-Israeli official decodes Trump's early morning demand: 'Not my war anymore'

A former Israeli diplomat reacted in real time to a social media post by President Donald Trump on the latest developments in the Iran war.

The 79-year-old president demanded "Israel and Iran must immediately stop 'shooting,'" and former Israeli consul general Alon Pinkas appeared minutes later on CNN to offer his analysis of the extremely short Truth Social post.

"This is something you would expect from the president to say, you know, the diplomatic lingo of show restraint, exercise caution, patience, and so on. It's clear that he, President Trump, had to make this statement, but basically what the statement is saying, you know, the underlining, the underlining logic of it is that 'this is not my war anymore, I, President Trump, this is not my war anymore – this is between Israel and Iran, and I'm not part of this, I'm pursuing negotiations to get a deal. Good deal, bad deal, mediocre deal, we could discuss this.'"

"Yeah, he's basically saying to Mr. Netanyahu, you're on your own, and he's basically saying to the Iranians, 'Well, 'you're not necessarily going to have a deal if you keep on shooting,'" Pinkas added. "But the bottom line is this: 'I'm not involved in this.'"

Trump has been pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop attacks on Lebanon to give him space to pursue a deal with Iran to end the war, but he has ignored the president's warning and Israel and Iran have traded strikes over the weekend in the worst escalation since a truce in April.

"Netanyahu and Trump have a different political calculus," Pinkas said. "Trump is saying, 'I want to end this war and I can rein in Israel, and I and I will tell them what to do, and they will do what I tell them, and I call the shots,' etc., etc. Netanyahu, on the other hand, has defied Trump three times in the last three weeks with breaking violating the cease fire in Lebanon, with attacking the Dacia, which is the quarter the neighborhood, the area in Beirut where mostly is centered despite Trump's warnings and again last night when Iran launched a barrage of missiles. Trump called on Netanyahu to show restraint and exercise restraint and and not retaliate, and three times Netanyahu defied him."

"Netanyahu is speaking to a domestic audience," he added. "He's got an election in two or three months, either in September or October, three or four months. So Netanyahu wants to brag that I stood up to the American president and came to national security and came to the defense of Israel. I stood up, and only I could do this. What Mr. Trump is doing in stating more than once that he calls the shots and Netanyahu will have no choice but to accept he's talking not necessarily about the ceasefire, but about a a framework or a provisional or a memorandum type of deal with Iran."

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