US President Donald Trump declared Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will not be arrested in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”

Trump appeared to be responding to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s expressed desire to arrest Netanyahu when he comes to town in September for the UN General Assembly, citing the International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against the Israeli premier for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Legal scholars have long said that Mamdani does not appear to have the authority to arrest Netanyahu. The mayor, a staunch critic of Israel, recently told The New York Times he is holding an “active conversation with our legal department” over the question of arresting Netanyahu and will do what the law allows.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague. He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” Mamdani told the Times. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

Trump, in a Truth Social post, said Netanyahu “is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protestors, and has spent the last 47 years killing American Soldiers, and others.”

“The only ones that should be arrested are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented SPIRAL OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, something that should have been dealt with years ago, by previous........

© The Times of Israel