Huckabee: Israel Unlikely to Strike Iran Without Trump’s Approval

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says it is unlikely Israel would move to strike Iran without explicit support from Washington, pointing to the deep level of trust between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump.

“I won’t be making that decision,” Huckabee said in an interview with Ynet. “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.”

While some reports claimed Trump recently instructed Netanyahu not to attack Iran, Huckabee denied any direct orders were given. “I can’t say that the president gave any instructions,” he said. “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.”

Huckabee made clear that Trump remains staunchly opposed to reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. “He was the president who tore up the first one,” Huckabee noted. “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,” he continued. “I don’t know how much clearer he could get.”

Responding to speculation about Trump’s frustration with Netanyahu, Huckabee said flatly: “That is simply not the case. The relationship is, I believe, rock solid.”

On the war in Gaza, Huckabee criticized international actors for, in his words, “putting more pressure on Israel than they’re putting on Hamas.” He blamed the ongoing conflict on Hamas’s refusal to surrender and emphasized the importance of removing the terror group from power.
“Leaving Hamas in power and letting them rule Gaza [would be] the same way that World War II could not end [while] leaving the Nazis in Germany and letting them continue to rule the place,” Huckabee said. “That is the message the president has sent us here with — Hamas can’t stay.”
“Hamas is not gonna have a role,” he added. “So I don’t think there’s any difference of opinion between the president [and] the prime minister on what it has to look like at the end.”

Despite difficulties surrounding the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, Huckabee defended the program’s progress. “It’s getting better every day,” he said. “We’re getting greater levels of security, pushing the food further inward… 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 also expressed deep frustration with the United Nations, saying, “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.”

Huckabee dismissed the French-Saudi UN initiative for Palestinian statehood scheduled for next week as “ridiculously ill-timed.”

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

Huckabee reaffirmed that the U.S. would not interfere if Israel decided to annex parts of Yehudah and Shomron.

“We don’t want to tell Israel what it should do and how it should create communities in Judea and Samaria,” he said. “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.”

Finally, Huckabee condemned the International Criminal Court, calling it “an incredibly lawless, worthless entity that is going after Israelis.”