President Trump told reporters on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, that he is "not happy" with Israel's conduct in Lebanon and suggested Syria's new government could handle Hezbollah more effectively, a blunt public rebuke that landed while the administration works to finalize a peace deal with Iran.
The remarks, reported by the New York Post, came Tuesday after Israel carried out weekend strikes on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Trump singled out Sunday's operations in particular, calling them "too much" and saying he had communicated his displeasure directly to Israeli officials.
The friction matters because it arrives at a delicate moment. Iran has said that Israel ending its attacks in Lebanon is a condition of any agreement to end what has become a three-and-a-half-month war. Trump, who has been finalizing a deal with Tehran, now finds one ally's military operations threatening to undercut the broader diplomatic play.
The president did not hold back. Speaking to reporters at the French alpine resort, Trump laid out a case that Israel had been fighting Hezbollah for too long and with too heavy a hand.
"I'm not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and Hezbollah. They should have been able to handle themselves faster."
He went further, criticizing the scale of destruction in residential areas:
"You don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody. There are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they're not all Hezbollah."
Trump said the strikes cast a "negative light on the big deal" with Iran, a direct acknowledgment that Israel's military tempo is complicating his own diplomatic timeline. That framing puts the Israeli campaign in a box: continue at the current pace and risk undercutting the Iran negotiations, or pull back and leave Hezbollah's infrastructure intact.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, showed no sign of yielding. On Monday he declared that Israeli forces would remain in Lebanese territory "for as long as necessary." The two leaders' public positions are now plainly at odds.
Perhaps the most striking element of Trump's remarks was his suggestion that Syria, a country still rebuilding after a civil war and a regime change just six months ago, could step in where Israel has struggled.
"I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah. To be honest with you, I think they would do a better job."
He doubled down with a conditional edge:
"If Israel can't do the job without killing everyone else, he'll do the job, Syria will do the job."
The "he" in that sentence refers to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led the overthrow of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Al-Sharaa's new government is barely half a year old. Whether it has the military capacity, or the political will, to confront a deeply entrenched, Iran-backed militia is an open question the president did not address.
Turkish media has reported that al-Sharaa may travel to Turkey next month to meet with Trump on the sidelines of a NATO leaders summit. If that meeting materializes, it would mark a significant step in the new Syrian government's international standing, and could signal that Trump is serious about giving Damascus a larger regional security role.
The idea carries obvious risks. Hezbollah has operated in Lebanon for decades with deep roots, extensive tunnels, and heavy Iranian backing. Syria's own military was hollowed out by years of civil war. Asking al-Sharaa to do what Netanyahu's forces have not finished is a tall order, and Trump offered no details on what support, if any, the United States would provide.
Trump's frustration with Israel cannot be separated from the Iran negotiations. The president has been working to finalize a deal with Tehran, and Iran has explicitly tied any agreement to Israel halting its strikes in Lebanon. Every apartment building that comes down in Beirut's suburbs or the Bekaa Valley gives Tehran leverage to delay, demand more, or walk away.
That dynamic puts Trump in an unusual position. He is simultaneously Israel's most vocal defender in Washington and the man trying to close a deal with Israel's chief adversary. The weekend strikes forced him to choose which priority to protect in public, and he chose the deal.
Republicans in Congress have pressed for a vote on the Iran deal, with lawmakers saying details remain scarce. The administration has not disclosed the full terms under negotiation, and Trump's G7 comments offered no new specifics, only the clear signal that Israel's operations are a complicating factor he wants resolved.
The stakes extend beyond diplomacy. When Trump first announced elements of the Iran deal framework, oil prices dropped to three-month lows on expectations that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to normal traffic. Any collapse of those talks could reverse that relief and send energy costs climbing again, a pocketbook concern for American consumers heading into summer.
The Israeli prime minister's Monday statement, that forces would stay in Lebanon "for as long as necessary", was not a casual remark. It was a direct signal to Washington, to Tehran, and to Hezbollah that Israel intends to operate on its own timeline regardless of external pressure.
Netanyahu has faced this kind of friction before. Allied leaders have urged restraint at various points in the conflict, and Israel has consistently prioritized its own security assessments over diplomatic convenience. But a public split with a sitting American president carries different weight, especially one who has been as supportive of Israeli interests as Trump.
Trump acknowledged that he had told Israeli officials directly that the Sunday strikes were unacceptable. "I did not like that, I let them know that," he said. The question now is whether that private message, and the very public one delivered at the G7, changes Israeli calculations or simply gets filed alongside previous warnings.
The president's willingness to criticize Israel publicly also marks a shift from his broader posture of protecting his own policy achievements at all costs. In this case, the Iran deal appears to matter more to him than shielding Netanyahu from criticism, a priority ranking that will be noted in Jerusalem, Tehran, and on Capitol Hill.
Trump's G7 comments raised as many questions as they answered. He did not specify what casualty figures prompted his concern, which apartment buildings he was referring to, or which Israeli officials received his complaints. He offered no details on how Syria would "take care of" Hezbollah, a group with tens of thousands of fighters, a sophisticated rocket arsenal, and deep ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
He also did not explain what consequences, if any, Israel would face for continuing operations at the current pace. American leverage over Israel is substantial, military aid, intelligence sharing, diplomatic cover at the United Nations, but Trump gave no indication he was prepared to use any of it.
The potential al-Sharaa meeting at the NATO summit next month could clarify whether the Syria proposal is a serious policy initiative or a rhetorical jab meant to pressure Netanyahu. Until then, it sits in the category of presidential suggestion, interesting, provocative, and entirely unproven.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court handed down its own setback for the administration this week, a reminder that Trump is managing multiple fronts simultaneously. The G7 stage gave him a chance to project control over the Middle East situation, but the gap between his stated preferences and the facts on the ground in Lebanon remains wide.
When a president tells an ally to step aside and let a six-month-old government finish the job, it is either a bold strategic move or a sign that the diplomatic calendar has started driving the military one. The next few weeks will tell us which.
