Donald Trump issued new warnings against Iran and Hamas after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida on Monday to try to advance the ceasefire deal that the president brokered in Gaza.

Trump threatened Iran with potential consequences, saying that Iran "may be behaving badly" and suggesting the country was trying to rebuild nuclear sites after the U.S. struck three of them this year.

“If it’s confirmed, look, there will be consequences," he said. "Consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than last time.”

Iran swiftly responded to Trump's remarks.

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, said that "any aggression will receive a strong, immediate response that goes beyond what the attacker expects," the state-run Nour News agency reported.

Trump also said Hamas would have “hell to pay” if they did not disarm to advance the Trump-brokered peace plan.

Ahead of their closed-door meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that the two leaders will discuss the need for Hamas to disarm, Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear programs and Syria's new government.

Standing alongside Trump, Netanyahu praised his U.S. counterpart.

"I'll say it again and again and again, we’ve never had a friend like President Trump in the White House. It’s not even close," he said. "And I think you can judge that by not merely by the frequency of our meetings, but by the content and the intensity."

Trump responded, "Well, I just want to say that it’s very important who the prime minister and president of Israel is. We have a great relationship.

"He can be very difficult on occasion, but you need a strong man," Trump added. "If you had a weak man, you wouldn’t have Israel right now. Israel would have been, you know, Israel, with most other leaders, would not exist today."

Their meeting comes one day after the president hosted Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago as part of the U.S. bid to negotiate a peace deal with Russia.

While Trump has been working for an end to the war in Europe, progress has stalled in the Middle East.

The Israel-Hamas truce went into effect in October, ending the two-year conflict in Gaza that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack on Israel.

But there has been little movement on the more complex second phase of the peace process, raising concerns both sides are failing to take action to carry out the next phase of the deal.

More than 400 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since that agreement, local officials say, while Israel has accused Hamas of ceasefire violations including the delayed return of hostage remains — with one body still to be handed over.

The U.N. Security Council gave its approval to Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan last month, which would see Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza and Hamas give up its weapons.

But few details have been publicly confirmed about the “Board of Peace” headed by Trump that would help oversee the territory's governance, or the International Stabilization Force (ISF) that would be deployed to Gaza.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this month that Washington was aiming to get the new governance bodies in place “very soon.”

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Rubio met with Netanyahu ahead of the Israeli prime minister's sit-down with the president.

While the U.S. may push its ally to move ahead in Gaza, the conversation with Netanyahu was also expected to feature mounting Israeli concerns over Iran.

Going into the meeting, Netanyahu was expected to make the case to Trump that Iran’s expansion of its ballistic missile program poses a threat that could necessitate swift action, NBC News reported earlier this month.

Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Tehran was expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.

The Israeli leader was expected to present Trump with options for the U.S. to join or assist in any new military operations, the sources said.

President Trump Meets With Visiting Israeli PM Netanyahu At The White House (Alex Wong / Getty Images file)
Monday's meeting will be Netanyahu's sixth with Trump this year. (Alex Wong / Getty Images file)
But Trump might take some convincing.

Although the U.S. conducted strikes on Iran’s major nuclear enrichment facilities in a joint operation with Israel in June, the president has hinted recently he might be open to returning to talks with Tehran.

He was more firm on that front Monday, telling reporters that he would he was open to having those talks.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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