Trump: “Without me, Israel would have disappeared” (60 Minutes, CBS)
Five days after the heavy defeat of the Republicans in the mid-term elections of November 3, Donald Trump gave a long interview to the show 60 Minutesairing Sunday, November 8 on CBS. In front of journalist Ross Douthat, he spoke about Iran, the price of gasoline and his electoral setback. Then, when asked about the Strait of Hormuz, he blurted out this sentence: “Without us, Israel would not exist. »
“Israel would have disappeared”
Ross Douthat asks how to exit the war, while ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz remain escorted by a large US military presence. The answer immediately shifts to money, then to Israel:
“At the end of this whole thing, these countries that we protected are going to reimburse us for all the costs we had for the war. We’re going to get all this money back. I told them, and they are going to do it, 100%, because without us, they wouldn’t exist. Without us, Israel would not exist. (…) Israel would not exist, without Donald Trump, because we went there with these magnificent B-2 bombers over a year ago, and we hit all three sites at the time. »
Trump talks about the June 2025 US strikes on the nuclear sites of Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, during the Twelve Day War. According to him, Iran was then “two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”. In March 2025, however, its own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, declared before Congress that the American services believed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
The journalist insists. Does Trump regret helping Israel carry out “decapitation strikes” against Iran, which hardened the regime and pushed it to escalation? The February 28, 2026 strikes, which opened the war, killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials. Trump responds without a shadow of regret:
“We could have done that, but we had people who would have gone further. (…) I want it to last in the long term, not in the short term. We decapitated their nuclear arsenal. If I hadn’t done that, there would be no Israel today. Israel would have disappeared. »
A war for Israel, from the mouth of Trump
Since February, Washington has given several reasons for this war: to prevent Iran from having the bomb, to change the regime, to respond to the bloody repression of Iranian demonstrations. On CBS, Trump only keeps one, the survival of Israel, and thus claims what his opponents accused him of.
On the Israeli side, the message was the same from day one. Defense Minister Israel Katz presented the strikes as a “preventive” attack intended to ward off threats against Israel. On April 1, Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated himself on having removed “two existential threats” for his country. In April, on Umma, General Dominique Trinquand went further: “It was the Israelis who led this war. »
The bill, for others
It remains to be seen who will pay. According to the Pentagon, the war had cost the United States at least $47.1 billion as of mid-October. This figure does not count the damage suffered by 24 American bases in the region, which the Wall Street Journal estimates between 5 and 15 billion. Trump only names Israel, but he targets “those countries we have protected.” As early as March, its spokesperson Karoline Leavitt raised the idea of making Arab countries pay for the war.
Neither amount, nor timetable, nor agreement have been announced. In Israel, the formula goes badly. The site Israel Today sees it as “the language of a creditor, not of an ally” and recalls that Israel did not wait for Donald Trump to exist.
“A great dislike for Israel”
On Israel, Trump also makes an admission. From the start of the show, he explains his side’s defeat in the war, the price of gasoline and, he says, “a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel.” There seems to be a dislike for Israel.”
There he takes up the analysis of his vice-president. On November 4, JD Vance wrote on X that the Republicans had lost because of the war, and that their former voters wanted in particular to “change our relationship with Israel”. Trump says he does not contradict him, except on one point: he would go to war again. “My answer is a resounding yes, because we cannot let Iran have nuclear weapons. » However, he concedes: “Is this a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not. »
An AP agency poll invites nuance: around a third of voters say that the war counted decisively in their vote, compared to half for the cost of living or corruption. Among Muslim voters, the effect is much clearer: according to CAIR, the war against Iran weighed in the choice of 76% of voters. By June, opinion polls showed that Israel had never been so unpopular in the United States.
Eighteen dead, and the others?
Later in the interview, Trump defends his military record in one number: “This war, seven months, 18 dead. » It’s “too much”, he admits, but nothing to do with the “40,000, 50,000, 60,000” deaths of past wars. “And what did we get?” No nuclear power. »
These eighteen dead are American soldiers, Venezuela included. At the end of October, the Pentagon recognized 23 for the war against Iran alone. The Iranian deaths are not included in any presidential report. As of April 1, after a month of bombing, the Iranian Ministry of Health already counted 2,076 deaths. Unicef recorded 300 children killed as of March 12. At the end of July, according to New York Timesapproximately 1,700 Iranian civilians had lost their lives. In Lebanon, where the Israeli army entered in March, the single day of strikes on April 8 left at least 357 dead.
“I make deals”
The passage about Israel ends with Trump’s favorite self-portrait: “I deal with these people. I deal with a lot of people, that’s what I’ve done my whole life. I make deals. And obviously, I make good deals, because I made a lot of money and I became president. That’s a deal too. »
The deal with Tehran is still pending. Trump assures that Iran wanted to sign just before the election, and that the defeat of the Republicans gives him today “a small certificate of hope”. On November 9, after receiving the Prime Minister of Qatar, he judged the war “effectively over” on a military level. In Donald Trump’s narrative, the war saved Israel, others will pay the price, and its Iranian victims appear nowhere.
Quotes translated by Umma according to the full transcript published by CBS News. Video: extract from 60 Minutes (CBS News, November 8, 2026), translated and subtitled by Oumma.
