Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists he will not request a pardon for his corruption trial if it means admitting guilt in the case, during an interview with an Australian TV personality aired on Thursday.
Speaking to TV host Erin Molan in a wide-ranging interview, Netanyahu expressed his gratitude to US President Donald Trump for being “so forthright” in his letter to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday, requesting the pardon for the premier.
“This trial is so absurd,” Netanyahu said. “I spent three days a week [in court] — can you imagine this, running a war and now seeking to expand the peace.”
In reality, Netanyahu has repeatedly asked — and has been allowed — to end hearings early due to affairs of state or his health.
“It hurts both American and Israeli interests, which is also what he said,” Netanyahu said of his corruption trial. “My time has to be free to pursue the things that will determine Israel’s future and the future of peace in the Middle East.”
Netanyahu is charged with one count of bribery, as well as three counts each of fraud and breach of trust, in three separate cases relating to corruption allegations against him. His trial began in 2020 and is still far from reaching an end.
The premier has denied any wrongdoing and said all the charges were fabricated in an attempted political coup led by the police and state prosecution.
Netanyahu stressed that he will not submit an official request for a pardon if it means admitting guilt: “That’s not going to happen. Nobody suggests that that’s what I’ll do, and I certainly won’t do that.”
Asked if he planned to run for another term, the 76-year-old Netanyahu said, “The answer is yes, and the second answer is also yes, but the people who will determine that are the people.”
“I have tremendous opposition, not very big, by the way, but funded with billions of dollars by foreign NGOs, by foreign governments, and so on. I keep winning all the time. But I win because the people decide,” he added.
Israel’s next elections must be held by October 2026. Polls have consistently shown Netanyahu’s current right-wing and religious coalition failing to retain its majority.
Syria
Asked about Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa meeting with Trump in Washington earlier this week, Netanyahu said he will judge the new Syrian leader by “what happens on the ground.”
“Does Syria become a peaceful country?” he said. “Does he weed out the jihadists in his own military? Does he work forward with me to achieve a demilitarized zone in southwest Syria that abuts the Golan Heights?”
In this photo released by the Syrian Presidency press office, US President Donald Trump, right, speaks with Syria’s President Ahmad al-Sharaa, at the White House in Washington, Nov. 10, 2025. (Syrian Presidency press office via AP)
“What do we do to secure our Druze brothers, the Syrian Druze brothers of Israel, who were mutilated, massacred, almost as bad as in the October 7th massacre that was conducted by Hamas in Gaza?” he asked.
He said if there is demilitarization of southwest Syria and permanent protection for the Druze there, “we can move on.”
“When I look at Al-Sharaa, I’m going to look at what is actually being done, what is actually being achieved.”
The US is brokering talks on a possible security pact between Syria and Israel, which remains wary of Sharaa’s former terror ties, and has criticized his government’s treatment of minorities. Israeli troops have also taken up several positions in southwestern Syria following Assad’s fall, in what the government has said is a temporary security measure.
Iran
Netanyahu also denied in the interview that Washington prevented Israel from finishing the job in the June war against Iran. “We had a very clear set of targets,” he said. “We were absolutely clear. We wanted to target the nuclear sites, the missile production sites, and a few other targets. We made that clear. When that was achieved, the war ended.”
“There was one possible more strike, and that was it,” he said. “It wasn’t something that we were stopped or we didn’t intend to follow our war plans.”
He said that Israel and the US were following Iran’s attempts to repair what was destroyed during the war.
This picture shows a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (Atta Kenare/AFP)
Israel said its sweeping assault in June on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program was necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state.
Gaza
Turning to the future of Gaza, Netanyahu said that Israel “will retain overriding security responsibility, because we don’t farm out our security to anyone else, not in Gaza or not in any other front.”
The prime minister’s Gaza comments came as the US advances a UN Security Council resolution to establish the International Stabilization Force in the Strip, which, according to the latest draft of the resolution obtained by The Times of Israel on Wednesday, indicates that the ISF could be tasked with disarming Hamas.
New York
Asked about New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s threats to arrest him if he visits the city, Netanyahu said, “Am I afraid of going there? Hell, no. Of course not.”
He said he would be open to speaking with Mamdani if he educates himself. “It’s good to be a young leader, but it’s not good to be a young, uneducated leader in the sense of not knowing economics, not knowing what antisemitism is, not knowing who the bad guys are. I think you should brush up on that. Then we might have a conversation.”
When he takes office on January 1, Mamdani will become the city’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest leader in generations.
He has acknowledged that many Jews disagree with his anti-Israel stances and has vowed to fight antisemitism as mayor.
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