Albanese praises Trump’s Middle East work

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese praised US President Donald Trump for his work in the Middle East during their meeting at the White House on Monday.

“We have stood side by side for freedom and democracy, and congratulations, I must say, Mr President, on the work that you’ve done with the Middle East, [it is] is an extraordinary achievement, and on defence, we’ve already had a discussion about taking it to the next level,” Albanese said during a press conference at the Oval Office.

During the press conference, Trump issued stark warnings to Hamas, threatening to “eradicate” the group if it does not comply with the terms of its ceasefire deal with Israel.

“We made a deal with Hamas that they’re going to be very good, they’re going to behave, they’re going to be nice. And if they’re not, we’re going to go and we’re going to eradicate them,” Trump said.

“This is a very violent group of people, and they got very rambunctious and they did things that they shouldn’t be doing. And if they keep doing it, then we’re going to go in and straighten it out, and it’ll happen very quickly and pretty violently. Unfortunately.”

When asked who would be “on the ground” to eradicate Hamas, Trump said, “It won’t be on the ground at all. We don’t need to, because we have many countries, as you know, signed on to this deal. Countries that four months ago, didn’t like each other, and now they’re all aligned together.”

Trump said multiple countries had offered to intervene.

“We’ve had countries calling me when they saw some of the killing with Hamas, saying we’d love to go in and take care of the situation ourselves. In addition, Israel would go in in two minutes if I asked them to go in … but right now, we haven’t said that. We’re going to give it a little chance, and hopefully there will be a little less violence.”

The President credited his administration’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities with enabling Middle East peace negotiations.

“Prior to us hitting Iran so hard, we could have never made that deal, because you would have had a dark cloud over the Middle East. When we took out their nuclear capability, [it] was one of the great military manoeuvres of all time. It was flawless,” said Trump.

“When that happened, everything was different. And we were able to get a deal. When it was finished, the Middle East just opened up.”

Trump said Hamas “don’t have the backing of really anybody anymore. They have to be good, and if they’re not good, they’ll be eradicated.”