Special to CosmicTribune.com, June 3, 2026

Writing for Christianity Today in March, Russell Moore noted: “We take for granted — what we assume when the course of the world seems like ‘just the way things are’ and we can’t even see the moral options and thus ignore them.”

President Donald Trump on Monday reportedly lit into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the prime minister ordered strikes on terrorists in southern Beirut.

Trump demanded in an expletive-laden phone call that Netanyahu resist strikes on Hizbullah, reports say.

The tense call came after Iran threatened to withdraw from negotiations with the U.S. after Israel ordered the strikes in Beirut, with Axios reporting Trump at one point asking Netanyahu, “What the f–k are you doing?”

“You’re f–king crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this,” a U.S. official summarized Trump’s comments to Axios.

Another source described Trump as sounding “pissed,” and claimed the president “steamrolled” the Israeli prime minister on the call.

“Bibi said, ‘OK, OK, just make sure everything is taken care of,’ ” the second official said.

Trump was reportedly aware that Hizbullah had been firing on Israeli troops but was concerned that Netanyahu was disproportionately escalating the situation — and potentially hurting U.S. negotiations with Teheran.

Shortly after the call, Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social:

I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi! I also had a conversation with Representatives of the Leaders of Hizbullah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel, and its soldiers. Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them. Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY! President DONALD J. TRUMP

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that part of the agreement the Trump Administration is pursuing with Iran is that the regime would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“They did not, at which point the president decided, and I think appropriately, we can’t have a world in which Iran — only Iranian ships get through the Strait,” Rubio said. “And so, if they’re gonna shut down the Strait for everybody, we’re gonna shut down the Strait for them, and we have done that through a very effective blockade.”

Rubio explained that “talks with Iran are not like talks with Switzerland” and that the regime has “agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program that, just a month ago, just a year ago, they were refusing to even mention, much less enter discussions about.”

But one of the main challenges is the fact that Iran’s “internal regime is somewhat fractured in the sense of it takes days to get responses from their system,” Rubio added.

In another post on Truth Social, Trump said that Iran wants to come to an agreement that would result in the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and limits on its nuclear program. The president also told NBC News that he had not received messages from the Iranian regime about suspending talks.

As Moore concluded for Christianity Today: “The quickest way to yield to a temptation is not to see it at all. ‘Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall’ (1 Cor. 10:12, ESV) is as true in wartime as it is in peace. War, in every case, is hell. Let’s watch out for ourselves, lest it also make us hellish.”

POSOBIEC: The hardliners are the ones who want the war to keep going. The hardliners in Iran, the hardliners in Israel, and the hardliners in America pic.twitter.com/pGbHrG785R

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 2, 2026

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