At his speech at the "Club 47" event in Florida on Wednesday night, former President Donald Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, essentially accusing him of chickening out at the last minute on the mission to take out Iranian general Qassim Suleimani.
Netanyahu, who leads Israel's right-wing Likud Party and was in and out of office over the last few years amid fracturing coalitions, a corruption indictment, and a controversial scheme to tilt the Israeli judiciary against convicting him, was a close political ally of Trump while he was in office — but to hear it from Trump now, he was not a reliable one.
According to Trump, Israel was working alongside U.S. forces on the plan to take out Suleimani, widely believed to have been a critical strategist of international terror activities, but pulled out of the strike that eliminated him one night before. "I'll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing," said Trump.
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"We were disappointed," Trump went on, but "we did it ourselves" — and then "Bibi tried to take credit for it."
All this comes just a few days after one of the most devastating terror attacks in Israeli history, with Hamas forces brutalizing and kidnapping civilians, leaving hundreds dead.
Netanyahu himself has come under scrutiny amid reports that Israeli intelligence services under his administration failed to properly anticipate and plan for such an attack.
