WASHINGTON — President Trump confirmed in an exclusive “Pod Force One” interview with The Post’s Miranda Devine that he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “f–king crazy” during a Monday phone call, but insisted they have “worked very well together.”
“I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon,” Trump said. The attacks have imperiled US-Iran peace talks due to Tehran’s insistence that the Israeli targeting of Hezbollah cease before a deal is reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and then dismantle Iran’s nuclear program.
“We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him,” Trump insisted after confirming his fiery outburst demanding that Netanyahu hold fire.
“I’m a wartime president,” the commander in chief told Devine for the new podcast episode out Wednesday. “He’s a wartime prime minister.”
Although the president said he’s frustrated by the possibility that the side conflict could derail a larger peace, he said he remains optimistic that he will have a deal “fairly quickly” — and crowed about record-high stock market values, showing the US economy is resilient, and dashed predictions of even higher oil prices.
“Everyone said it was going to be $300, $400 a barrel, it’s 98 dollars a barrel but that’s not a big price to pay if you look at the possibility of them having a nuclear weapon,” he said.
A memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz as early as this week, alleviating the energy pinch that caused gasoline prices and inflation to surge.
But there have been several false starts — caused in part by alleged Iranian backtracking as well as the nation’s days-long courier process to avoid the assassination of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
Trump said he was in no rush.
He even said it’s possible the US naval blockade around the waterway will remain in place through Labor Day — Monday, Sept. 7 — meaning a full summer of elevated fuel prices and likely harm to Republicans in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be [closed through Labor Day], but I think it’s unlikely. I think that we’ll have it. I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly,” he said.
Trump stuck largely to his optimistic framing and said talks with Iran are “rapidly evolving” and “we’re not going to have a nuclear weapon and lots of other good things are going to happen.”
Trump’s explosive language with Netanyahu was first reported Monday by Axios and was met with disbelief by some defenders of Israel, including conservative commentator Mark Levin, who called on the FBI to investigate who supplied the news outlet the vulgar verbiage, claiming it aided Iran.
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Trump has struggled for weeks to broker an end to the conflict, which began on Feb. 28 with an initial four-week timeframe.
A cease-fire has been in effect since April 7, though during the lull in fighting both the Iranian and US militaries have shut off most commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil flows.
Trump said he believes that Khamenei is “involved, absolutely” in making decisions about how to end the war and that “they have a lot of respect for him” after Israeli airstrikes assassinated his father, the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and other members of his family on the first day of the war.
“I’d like to meet him,” Trump said of Mojtaba, 56.
“I’d love to meet everybody. I would like to meet him, and we probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.”