WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Thursday he had told his ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike anymore gas fields in Iran, which retaliated to an attack by hitting Arab Gulf energy sites.
“I told him, don’t do that, and he won’t do that,” Trump told reporters as he met Japan’s prime minister.
“We get along great. It’s coordinated, but on occasion, he’ll do something” that the United States opposes, Trump said.
Iran struck a key gas hub in Qatar on Wednesday evening after Israel bombed facilities at Iran’s main gas field earlier in the day. Iran has also targeted energy facilities in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in response to the Israeli attack.
Israel attacked Iran's South Pars gas field on Wednesday. (Social Media/via Reuters)
Netanyahu confirmed on Thursday evening that Trump had asked him not to attack Iran's gas fields in the futures adding, "we're holding out."
He said Israel had "acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound" in Iran's massive South Pars gas field.
Iran's retaliatory attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City caused extensive damage and sparked a surge in global energy prices. QatarEnergy said the strike knocked out 17 percent of Qatar’s LNG export capacity.
Trump also suggested he was not looking at deploying more soldiers to the Middle East amid the Iran war.
“I’m not putting troops anywhere,” Trump said, asked by a reporter whether he was planning to send more service members to the region. “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you. But I’m not putting troops. We will do whatever is necessary to keep the price.”
Trump spoke at the White House during an Oval Office meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration is considering deploying thousands of US troops to reinforce the Iran operation, citing a US official and three people familiar with the matter.
Earlier, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US objectives in the war have not changed since strikes with Israel started on February 28.
He accused the media of stirring up concerns that the US risked being locked in an open-ended conflict with shifting priorities.
The US has carried out strikes against 7,000 targets inside Iran, and hit more than 40 Iranian mine-laying vessels and 11 submarines.
“Our objectives, given directly from our America-first president, remain exactly what they were on day one,” Hegseth told reporters.
“These are not the media’s objectives, not Iran’s objectives, not new objectives. Our objectives — unchanged, on target and on plan,” Hegseth added.
He spent several minutes in his opening statement criticizing the press, accusing it of trying to convince the American public that it was “spinning toward an endless abyss, or a forever war, or a quagmire.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Hegseth told reporters the objectives remained to destroy Iran’s missile launchers, its defense industrial base and its navy, and to never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
* With Reuters and AFP
