US ambassador says Israel unlikely to strike Iran without green light from Trump

Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without a green light from Washington, says US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in an interview with Ynet.

“I won’t be making that decision,” says the former governor and Baptist minister. “I just don’t in my mind see that that would be something that would likely happen because of the closeness of the relationship and the trust, and that’s the word I would emphasize, there is a trust between the US and Israel.”

Huckabee cast doubt on reports that US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week not to attack Iran: “I can’t say that the president gave any instructions. I know they’ve had many conversations and they’ve discussed all aspects, but it would not be like the president to give instructions to the prime minister any more than it would be typical that the prime minister would give instructions to the president.”

Trump will not agree to a JCPOA 2.0 deal in nuclear talks with Iran, insists Huckabee.

“He was the president who tore up the first one,” he says, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal spearheaded by the Barack Obama administration. “I think the last thing he would have any interest in doing would be to embrace an Obama policy that was a total failure and one that he rejected as soon as he got in office.”

“The president made very clear that Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon, that Iran isn’t going to have any enrichment, and I don’t know how much clearer he could get than he was,” Huckabee adds.

He also says that reports that Trump is frustrated with Netanyahu are “simply not the case.”

“The relationship is, I believe, rock solid.”

Turning to the Gaza war, Huckabee blasts Western partners for “putting more pressure on Israel than they’re putting on Hamas.”

He blames Hamas for the continuation of the war by refusing to surrender, while stressing that the terror organization cannot be allowed to stay in power in Gaza: “Leaving Hamas in power and letting them rule Gaza for the same way that World War II could not end, leaving the Nazis in Germany and letting them continue to rule the place. Plus, that is the message the president has sent us here with Hamas can’t stay.”

“Hamas is not gonna have a role,” Huckabee continues, “so I don’t think there’s any difference of opinion between the president, the prime minister on what it has to look like at the end.”

Despite violence and chaos at distribution sites, Huckabee doubles down on support for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund: “It’s getting better every day. We learn something new every day, and how it’s being carried out. We’re getting greater levels of security, pushing the food further inward to the people who are receiving it, so it’s easier for them to get it. Hamas is doing everything it can to disrupt the flow of the food, and that’s the piece of this that isn’t getting reported.”

He adds that the US is “very frustrated with the fact that the UN has been screaming to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, and then when we created an organization to do that very thing, they’ve sat on their hands.”

He calls the French-Saudi United Nations on Palestinian statehood next week “ridiculously ill-timed.”

“This was in the midst of a war, for heaven’s sakes, that they, they’re facing threats on all sides,” he says of Israel. “You would think that if European countries have time and energy to put pressure on anyone, anything for any purpose, they would say, Hamas, we’re putting all the pressure on you.”

Huckabee says that Washington would not interfere with a decision to annex parts of the West Bank.

“We don’t want to tell Israel what it should do and how it should create communities in Judea and Samaria,” he says, using the Israeli name for the West Bank. “We have been very clear, and this goes back to the first Trump administration, that developing communities in Judea and Samaria is not a violation of international law.”

Asked about the International Criminal Court, Huckabee calls the Hague-based court “an incredibly lawless, worthless entity that is going after Israelis.”