FLORIDA — US President Donald Trump has warned that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm while offering full-throated support to Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting with the Israeli prime minister in Florida. He also warned Iran that the United States could support another major strike on Iran were it to resume rebuilding its ballistic missile or nuclear weapons programs.
“If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do, then there will be hell to pay for them,” Trump told a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida.
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of major breaches of the deal and look no closer to accepting the much more difficult steps envisaged for the next phase. Hamas, which has refused to disarm, has been reasserting its control as Israeli troops remain entrenched in about half the territory.
During his Monday comments, Trump heaped the blame on the militant group for not disarming more promptly, arguing that Israel had lived up to its side of the deal and warning that Hamas was inviting grave consequences.
“They have to disarm in a fairly short period of time,” he said.
Trump publicly threw his support behind Netanyahu, who has taken a hard line on moving to the next stage of the Gaza ceasefire plan.
“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel’s doing,” Trump said. “I’m concerned about what other people are doing or maybe aren’t doing. But I’m not concerned. They’ve lived up to the plan.”
Iran’s weapons program
Trump suggested Tehran may be working to restore its weapons programs after a massive US strike in June.
“I’ve been reading that they’re building up weapons and other things, and if they are, they’re not using the sites we obliterated, but possibly different sites,” Trump told reporters during a press conference.
“We know exactly where they’re going, what they’re doing, and I hope they’re not doing it because we don’t want to waste fuel on a B-2,” he added, referring to the bomber used in the earlier strike. “It’s a 37-hour trip both ways. I don’t want to waste a lot of fuel.”
Trump, who has broached a potential nuclear deal with Tehran in recent months, said his talks with Netanyahu focused on advancing the fragile Gaza peace deal he brokered and addressing Israeli concerns over Iran and over Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran, which fought a 12-day war with Israel in June, said last week that it had conducted missile exercises for the second time this month.
Trump said he wanted to move to the second phase of the ceasefire deal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas reached in October after two years of fighting in Gaza, a progression that entails international peacekeeping forces deployed in the Palestinian enclave.
Netanyahu said this month that Trump had invited him for the talks, as Washington pushes to establish transitional governance for the Palestinian enclave amid Israeli reluctance to move forward.
The deployment of the international security force was mandated by a November 17 UN Security Council resolution.
While Washington has brokered three ceasefires involving its longtime ally — between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, and Israel and Lebanon — Netanyahu is wary of Israel’s foes rebuilding their forces after they were considerably weakened in multiple wars.
Overall, Trump’s comments suggested he remains firmly in Netanyahu’s camp, even as some aides have privately questioned the Israeli leader’s commitment to the Gaza ceasefire. His comments also suggested he is willing to risk additional hostilities related to Gaza and Iran, even as Trump has taken credit for resolving Israel’s wars in both places.
Trump struck a warm tone as he greeted Netanyahu before their meeting, going so far as to say that Israeli President Isaac Herzog had told him he planned to pardon Netanyahu of corruption-related charges — a conversation Herzog’s office immediately denied took place.
In a bravura display of mutual admiration, Netanyahu announced that the US president would be awarded the Israel prize, the country’s highest civilian honour, which since its inception in the 1950s has never before been given to a non-Israeli person.
Iran warns of ‘severe’ response after Trump’s new strikes threat
Iran has promised to respond harshly to any aggression after United States President Donald Trump threatened further military action, should Tehran attempt to rebuild its nuclear programme or missile capabilities.
President Masoud Pezeshkian issued the warning on X on Tuesday, a day after Trump met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Florida estate, where he firmly leaned into the Israeli regional narrative yet again.
The US had not previously said it would target Iran’s missile capabilities, which has long been an Israeli aspiration, focusing instead on Tehran’s nuclear programme. Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear activities are for civilian purposes only, and neither US intelligence nor the UN’s nuclear watchdog found any evidence of atomic weapons production before the June attacks by the US and Israel.
Iran has ruled out negotiating over its missile programme.
The leaders’ comments raise the spectre of renewed conflict just months after a devastating 12-day war in June that killed more than 1,100 Iranians and left 28 in Israel dead.
Pezeshkian said the response of Iran to any aggression would be “severe and regret-inducing”. His defiant message came hours after Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort that Washington could carry out another major assault on Iran.
“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” Trump said, standing alongside Netanyahu. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
The US president said he would support strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme “immediately” and on its missile facilities if Tehran continues developing long-range weapons.
Israeli officials have expressed concern in recent weeks that Iran is quietly rebuilding its ballistic missile stockpile, which was significantly depleted during the June conflict.
“If the Americans do not reach an agreement with the Iranians that halts their ballistic missile program, it may be necessary to confront Tehran,” an Israeli official told Ynet this week.
Pezeshkian recently described the standoff as a “full-scale war” with the US, Israel and Europe that is “more complicated and more difficult” than Iran’s bloody conflict with Iraq in the 1980s, which left more than one million dead. — Agencies
