Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to have great respect for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a panel interview Tuesday at Harvard University, published in The Harvard Gazette.
Tillerson said during a 90-minute private talk about his time in the State Department that Netanyahu is “an extraordinarily skilled” politician and diplomat, albeit “a bit Machiavellian.”
Tillerson said that despite the close diplomatic ties Israel has with the United States, “In dealing with Bibi, it’s always useful to carry a healthy amount of skepticism in your discussions with him.”
Specifically, the former Secretary of State accused Israel of sharing “misinformation” with President Donald Trump several times deliberately.
“They did that with that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys.’ We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played,’” said Tillerson. “It bothers me that an ally that’s that close and important to us would do that to us.”