Former President Bill Clinton urged President Donald Trump to help defuse the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. Clinton shared these remarks during an appearance on The Daily Show with Jordan Klepper, offering his perspective as tensions rise and the world watches for Trump’s next move.
Clinton’s unsolicited advice comes at a time when Trump has stated no final decision on the U.S.’s possible action when it comes to Iran. Trump has met multiple times with his national security team in recent days. He also expressed vocal support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He reportedly told him to “keep going.”
Trump also called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” prompting fiery responses from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. According to ABC News, which monitors Iranian state media, Khamenei warned that “war will be met with war.” He added that “Iran will not surrender.”
What did Clinton say?
Clinton, who sought to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000, with no clear breakthrough, talked at length about the current crisis.
“I think we should be trying to defuse it and I hope President Trump will do that,” Clinton said. “I hope anybody there will do that. We’ve got to convince our friends in the Middle East that we’ll stand with them and try to protect them but choosing undeclared wars, in which the primary victims are civilians who are not politically involved, one way or the other, who just want to live decent lives, is not a good solution.”
Clinton also reiterated his long-standing position that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon. However, he added that Netanyahu has “long wanted to fight Iran” as a strategy to maintain political power in Israel.
Obama weighs in
Meanwhile, former Democratic President Barack Obama weighed in on the broader state of American democracy, drawing a comparison between the current political climate in the U.S. and authoritarian regimes.
Speaking in Hartford, Connecticut, during a Connecticut Forum Radio broadcast, Obama avoided mentioning Trump by name but said: “If you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood, and not just my generation, at least since World War II, our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work.”
As of now, there has been no official response from the White House regarding the comments by Clinton or Obama. Trump has also not responded via his preferred platform, Truth Social.
