WASHINGTON — During an interview on “Pod Force One,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz disclosed that President Trump has been assertive in his dealings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Addressing claims from former counterterrorism chief Joe Kent and others that Netanyahu has influenced Trump toward conflict with Iran, Waltz firmly stated that President Trump is unequivocally in control of such decisions.
“No one should think for a moment that any world leader, advisor, or anyone else can walk into the Oval Office and sway President Trump,” Waltz emphasized to Miranda Devine, the podcast’s host.
He clarified, “These decisions are the president’s own. I’ve witnessed him being direct with Netanyahu. We all saw it when Prime Minister Netanyahu had to reach out to the leader of Qatar to apologize for the incident in downtown Qatar. That was at President Trump’s behest.”
Waltz underscored, “President Trump is the one making the decisions. He is the commander-in-chief, without a doubt.”
In a notable event in September, during a White House visit, Trump persuaded Netanyahu to formally express regret to his Qatari counterpart for the September 9, 2025, strike in Doha.
That strike in Doha was intended to hit Hamas leadership during hostage negotiations that Qatar was mediating. Israel had long been frustrated at Qatar for allowing top Hamas officials to live within its borders.
Ultimately, Israeli officials privately acknowledged the strike failed to kill the Hamas leadership. But it killed at least six people, including a Qatari security official, and injured four.
The White House released an image of Netanyahu making the call from the White House.
While Trump and Netanyahu have a famously chummy rapport, the US president has occasionally bashed the Israeli PM in the past, including for acknowledging former President Joe Biden’s 2020 win and allegedly backing out of the strike to kill former Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Last year, members of the Trump administration were unhappy about Israel’s decision to carry out strikes in Syria despite the president trying to mend fences with its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Waltz also broadly praised America’s Gulf allies for “standing strong” despite weathering sporadic attacks from Iran amid Operation Epic Fury.
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“I think this, shoot in all directions approach from the Iranian regime is going to, over the long term, really backfire,” Waltz predicted. “Because of the neighborhood they sit in and some shared economic interests.”
“Qatar, that’s sharing the world’s largest gas field with Iran, always took a little bit of a neutral approach; they wanted to kind of tiptoe carefully,” he added. “Well, now that Iran has fired at their hospitals, hotels, ports, airports, neighborhoods, they’ve had it. Iran is now a declared enemy.”
Waltz further mused that while “Gulf Arabs were fighting a lot amongst themselves” months ago, now they are “completely unified.”
He recalled how the UN adopted a resolution to condemn Iran earlier this month after the regime began striking Gulf allies that weren’t involved in the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
“This is where diplomacy can work, because it shows how isolated Iran is,” Waltz added. “Russia and China, sitting right behind me, had the opportunity to veto it, and they chose not to. They backed away and let the Gulf Arabs take that action, which was really important.”
