President Trump confirmed Wednesday that he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a profanity-laced expletive during a phone call earlier this week, while insisting the two remain close allies and that a nuclear deal with Iran is within reach.

Trump confirmed in a wide-ranging interview on the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, published Wednesday, that he called Netanyahu “[expletive] crazy” during a Monday phone call. He pushed back on characterizations of the exchange as a blowup. “I wouldn’t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon,” Trump said, adding, “We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot.”

The explosive language, first reported Monday by Axios, was met with disbelief by some defenders of Israel, including conservative commentator Mark Levin, who called on the FBI to investigate the leak, claiming it aided Iran.

Trump framed the friction as the natural tension between two leaders operating under wartime conditions. “I’m a wartime president,” he told host Miranda Devine. “He’s a wartime prime minister.”

The spat is more than a matter of tone. Israel’s expanding ground and air offensive in Lebanon has emerged as the most consequential setback to nuclear framework talks since a proposed 60-day memorandum of understanding was reached, with Iran suspending its exchange of texts through mediators in protest of Israeli actions it characterized as ceasefire violations.

Tehran has conditioned any deal on a halt to Israeli targeting of Hezbollah, a demand Netanyahu has so far resisted.

Despite that rupture, Trump projected confidence that a resolution is near. “I think we’re going to be in very good shape,” he said. “I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly.”

“We’ve essentially defeated the military,” he said, adding that Iran “has no navy, they have no air force, they have very few soldiers” and that its economy is “crashing” under what he estimated is 250% inflation.

Trump nonetheless indicated he has not yet made a final determination on whether to sign a deal or resume the military campaign. “Now I have to make a determination: do we sign a deal or do we do it the other way? And the other way is not nice,” he said, though he expressed a preference for the diplomatic route.

A ceasefire has been in effect since April 7, though both the Iranian and U.S. militaries have shut off most commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. The U.S. imposed a counter-blockade in mid-April targeting ships seeking to reach Iranian ports.

Asked directly whether the blockade could remain in place through Labor Day, September 7, Trump did not rule it out. “I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be, but I think it’s unlikely,” he said. A prolonged closure would keep fuel prices elevated heading into November midterm elections, compounding political pressure on congressional Republicans.

Trump pointed to oil prices as evidence that fears of a prolonged energy shock have been overblown. “Everyone said it was going to be $300, $400 a barrel — it’s $98 a barrel,” he said. He tied inflation broadly to energy costs, arguing that “if you take away just the price of gasoline, the energy, we have very little inflation” and predicting prices would “start coming down very rapidly” once the conflict winds down.

Trump said Iran has already agreed in principle not to obtain nuclear weapons and expressed a desire to meet new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who assumed power after Israeli airstrikes killed his father, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war in February. “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,” Trump said.

A memorandum of understanding that could reopen the Strait to commercial shipping has been in draft form for weeks, but several false starts — attributed partly to Iranian backtracking and partly to Tehran’s courier-based communications process, designed to reduce the risk of assassinating the new supreme leader — have prevented it from being signed.

Talks are described by the administration as “rapidly evolving,” with Trump saying “we’re not going to have a nuclear weapon and lots of other good things are going to happen.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)