US President Donald Trump said his foreign policy decisions were responsible for Israel’s continued existence, crediting both his withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the June 2025 American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
In an interview with Axios, Trump argued that had the US not exited the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran would have acquired a nuclear weapon and used it against Israel. “I had to stop them because if they had a nuclear weapon, they would use it. And you want to see bedlam, let them blow up a couple of cities someplace, like they would’ve blown up Israel. If it weren’t for me, Israel would not exist today because I terminated the Barack Hussein Obama deal, the JCPOA, which was a road to a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
He added that under the JCPOA, Iran would have obtained nuclear weapons five years earlier and could have used one against Israel within the first week of acquiring it.
Trump also defended the June 2025 US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, saying Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile had been roughly a month from weapons-grade readiness at the time. “All that enriched material, they were one month away. It was right there. They could have walked down. They can’t do that anymore. You know, the B2 bombers did their job with those great pilots. That ceiling, the mountain collapsed on top of it. It collapsed on top of it. Had we not hit them, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon. They would’ve used it on Israel,” he said.
Throughout the interview, Trump emphasized Israel’s reliance on US military power, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a capable partner but needs to be kept “sane.” He said Israel holds him in high regard, while underscoring that it is the United States that holds the greater military leverage the “one with guns.”
Trump said he was caught off guard by Iran’s decision to target Gulf states in retaliation for the strikes, despite most military analysts having anticipated such a response. Intelligence officials and diplomatic analysts pushed back on Trump’s characterization, telling Axios that pre-war intelligence assessments had explicitly flagged strikes on Gulf capitals as a likely outcome.
Trump additionally pointed to the 2020 killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, whom he described as a “mad genius” and the “father of the roadside bombing,” as a factor underpinning the current US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. He said Iran was unable to produce a replacement of Soleimani’s caliber, which he credited as laying the groundwork for the current outcome he called a US “victory.”
