Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “certainly gotten some things wrong”, US Vice-President JD Vance has said, as ties between the two partners in the war against Iran appear to have become strained in recent weeks.
While Vance would not provide examples, he told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that Netanyahu “aggressively asserts the interests of his country” but that they were not always aligned with those of the US.
His comments mark a further public admission that relations between the two allies have come under pressure of late.
Recently, US President Donald Trump reportedly clashed with the Israeli leader over military action in Lebanon that brought renewed strikes and threatened peace talks with Tehran.
The US and Iran exchanged strikes for a second consecutive day overnight, straining a ceasefire between the two nations that has remained in place since April.
It came after Trump said Tehran had taken “too long to make a deal” to end the war, though the renewed hostilities were triggered by events in Lebanon, where Israel has continued an operation aimed at the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah.
Last week, Trump told an Axios journalist that he had called Netanyahu “effing crazy” in a phone conversation, saying he had been “a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon”.