A Lot On The Line

The long-anticipated meeting between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finally here and considering the current state of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel the meeting is critical as we read in reports from The Times Of Israel. One hot topic was the Gazans:

US President Donald Trump repeats his assertion that a significant percentage of Gazans would move if given the opportunity to “live in a better climate.”

“I think it would be a great opportunity,” he says of Gazans’ emigration during a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adding that polls showing 50% of them wanting to leave reflect “common sense.”

“Let’s see if that opportunity presents itself,” he says, arguing that more than half would leave “if given the opportunity.”

“We’re helping the people of Gaza a lot,” says Trump. “So is Israel, by the way.”

I’m sure a lot of Hamas sympathizers won’t see it that way, though. Another issue that Trump addressed is Israel and the ceasefire, which he thinks that Israel is fully complying with:

US President Donald Trump says he is “not concerned about anything Israel is doing” around his peace plan for Gaza. “I’m concerned about what other people are doing or maybe aren’t doing.”

He stresses that Israel has “lived up to the plan. They’re strong, they’re solid.”

The US President does think Israel should be more open to tolerating violations:

At the same time, Trump says that sometimes Israel “doesn’t understand that when someone violates something, you want to give them a second chance. We’ve given them a couple of second chances,” he says, pointing at Netanyahu, appearing to imply Israel has committed some sort of violation.

But Trump emphasizes that “Israel has lived up to the plan, one hundred percent,” adding that “we made the plan possible by taking out Iran.”

Seriously, Hamas killed 1,200 Jews, held many hostages for over 700 days and killed many others. That wound is still raw for many including Netanyahu. Include the consistent rhetoric of Hamas that they want to do more October 7ths and it’s easy to understand why talk of giving these terrorists any room to work is a hard pill to swallow. Talk of Hamas disarming came as well:

US President Donald Trump says he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “talked about Hamas and we talked about disarmament.”

The good news is that Trump wants the disarming phase to happen quickly:

Hamas “will be given a very short period of time to disarm,” says Trump.

Top White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be in charge of that effort from the US side, says Trump. “If they don’t disarm, as they agreed to do, they agreed to it, then there will be hell to pay for them.”

“They have to disarm within a fairly short period of time,” Trump stresses.

The bad news is that we’ve heard this kind of talk before from Trump. However, he did get the last of the living hostages back and I think Israel is giving him a long leash on for doing that.

Short Leash For Iran

According to a report from The Jerusalem Post Trump is keeping a close eye on Iran and will let Israel attack again as well as pull the trigger on another US attack:

Trump said he would be open to supporting another rapid Israeli attack on Iran if Iran continues developing its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.

Trump said that any attack will be worse than the last time and also remarked that Hezbollah could also be in the US crosshairs:

“Iran may be behaving badly. Because it has not been confirmed, but if it is, the consequences will be more severe than last time,” Trump added, and also addressed the situation in Lebanon, claiming that Hezbollah "is behaving badly" and that "we will see what to do."

Trump also commented that the current PM is the reason for Israel still being around:

“I feel that if you had the wrong prime minister, Israel would not exist,” he told reporters during remarks full of praise for Netanyahu.

Going back to Iran, the US President got specific about Iran rebuilding its military weapons:

Trump celebrated the US military’s success in wiping out much of Iran’s nuclear capabilities with “beautiful B-2 bombers.”

“I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” he said ahead of the meeting. “We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them.”

He then noted that the current Iranian leadership needs to go:

Trump said the Iranian people were unhappy, their economy is bad, and the regime “starts shooting people” every time there is some form of resistance. He declined to comment when asked whether he would support the Ayatollah’s regime being overthrown.

“You know, they kill people,” Trump said.

Some leaders in Israel liked what they heard:

Senior Israeli officials had hoped such a statement would be made by Trump, who until now had referred only to Iran’s nuclear program as justification for military action.

One US Senator who is a strong supporter of Israel met to discuss Iran as well:

Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), a close ally of Trump, arrived in Israel for a 24-hour visit, during which he met with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, head of the Operations Directorate Maj.-Gen. Itzik Cohen, and other senior officials. Much of the discussions focused on Iran’s ballistic-missile program.

Netanyahu reportedly brought along Israeli intelligence that shows the Iranians are indeed hurriedly restocking its military program:

Netanyahu arrived at Mar-a-Lago with an “intelligence dossier” dealing with the Iranian threat and Tehran’s attempts to rebuild its capabilities.

I’m not certain about how all these things fit into end times prophecy but I know that Iran is mentioned prominently and that means we need to keep our eyes on them as we pray for the peace of Jerusalem.