Former American President Donald Trump, who is again running for the top office, has said Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
His remarks followed the escalation in the ongoing Middle-East crisis over the killing of Iran-back Hezbollah group’s top leaders by Israel in precision air strikes in southern Lebanon.
Speaking during a campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Trump was quoted as saying by Fox News on the Israel and Iran conflict: “As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you wanna hit, right? I said, ‘I think he’s got that one wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?’”
He was also referring to a question posed to Democratic President Joe Biden this week over the possibility of Israel striking Iran’s nuclear programme.
When Biden was asked if he would support strikes against Iranian nuclear sites, he reportedly told reporters that his answer was ‘no’.
Trump made similar comments in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, telling correspondent Bill Melugin that Biden’s response on Israel attacking Iran was the “craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear.”
Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are engaged in a tough battle for the US Presidential seat with the polls to decide the fates of the two candidates slated less a month from now on November 5.
As Lebanon suffered another night of heavy Israeli bombing, UN humanitarians and partners described how people desperate to flee the violence found the country’s main border crossing into Syria cut by a new dawn strike, forcing them to skirt “a huge crater” and rubble on foot, to reach the other side.
“There were two strikes and a huge crater was created in the no-man’s land between the Syrian and the Lebanese side. It’s very hard for vehicles still to go through this road,” said Rula Amin, Senior Communications Advisor for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, for the Middle East and North Africa.
Speaking from Amman, Amin said that people at the Masnaa crossing were so “desperate to flee Lebanon that they actually walked through that destroyed road”.
Hundreds of thousands of people have crossed into Syria via this route in the past 10 days, according to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).
