The following is a transcript of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first English-language press conference since the start of the Iran war, held in Jerusalem on March 19, 2026.
Netanyahu began with brief remarks in Hebrew in which he stated that, after 20 days of the campaign, “Iran today has no ability to enrich uranium, and no ability to produce ballistic missiles,” a claim he did not repeat in the English statement and question and answer session that followed. (Note: Some of the questions put to Netanyahu were not clearly audible.)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Welcome to the foreign press. First of all, I just want to say: I’m alive, and you’re all witnesses. Now that I dispatched this piece of fake news, I want to give you an update on Operation Roaring Lion.
Under President Trump’s visionary leadership, America and Israel are acting together in Iran with great determination and unprecedented strength. Operation [Roaring] Lion is designed to remove the existential threats posed by the Ayatollah regime, the regime that has waged war against America and Israel and the people of Iran for 47 years. It chants, “Death to America, death to Israel.” And it delivers death to its own people.
Our goals are three. One, removing the nuclear threat. Second, removing the ballistic missile threat, and removing both of these threats before they’re buried deep underground and become immune from aerial attack. And third, this means creating the conditions for the Iranian people to grasp their freedom, to control their destiny.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition
by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
Today, the Ayatollah regime is not only attacking America is not only attacking Israel, not only attacking the Iranian people, it is attacking the entire Middle East and beyond. They’ve attacked civilians and Americans and American assets in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and they’ve even attacked, through their proxies, Cyprus and Europe.
The regime has waged war against America and Israel and the people of Iran for 47 years
We’ve warned for decades that their ballistic missile program would be used to attack these targets far and wide, and if they’re not stopped, that’s just the beginning. The death cult in Iran is trying to blackmail the world by closing a key international maritime route, the Straits of Hormuz. It won’t work. Israel is helping in its own way, in intel and other means, the American effort to open the Straits of Hormuz.
But I want to ask you to imagine how the Ayatollah regime would be able to blackmail the entire world if they had ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Just imagine what they would do. Look at what they’re doing now and imagine what they would do if they had ballistic missiles, international-range ballistic missiles, and nuclear-tipped warheads. Just imagine what a great threat that would be.
So today Israel and the United States are protecting America, Israel, the entire Middle East, but I venture to say the entire world. Despite the fake news that is unfortunately being spread since the start of the war 20 days ago, we are winning, and Iran is being decimated. Iran’s missile and drone arsenal is being massively degraded and will be destroyed.
Hundreds of their launchers have been destroyed. Their stockpiles of missiles are being hit hard, and so are the industries that produce them. That’s important. In Rising Lion, we destroyed missiles and we destroyed a lot of the nuclear infrastructure. But what we’re destroying now are the factories that produce the components to make these missiles and to make the nuclear weapons that they’re trying to produce. We’re wiping out their industrial base in a way that we didn’t do before.
Iran’s air defenses have been rendered useless. Their navy is lying at the bottom of the sea. Today, we hit the other part of their navy, in the Caspian Sea. Their air force is nearly destroyed. Iran’s command and control structure is in utter chaos. And I can tell you that there’s still more work to do, and we’re going to do it.
Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jets prepare to take off for strikes in Iran, in a handout photo published on March 19, 2026. (Israel Defense Forces)
And I want to close these opening remarks with one other fake news. And that is that Israel somehow dragged the US into a conflict with Iran. Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on. President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America, and may I add, I think what is also good for future generations.
In this case, those interests are absolutely clear. And so is the clarity of our achievements. Together in close coordination with President Trump, close coordination between America and Israel, our militaries, our intelligence services, we’re achieving goals, in lightning speed.
But I want to say another word. It’s been said that for 40 years I’ve been saying that Iran is a danger to Israel and a danger to the world. That is true. You know who else said that? President Trump. 47 years ago, when the Iranian thugs took over the American embassy, he said how dangerous this regime is. In his first term in office, he didn’t need any convincing, he said the Iranian nuclear deal was the worst deal that he’d ever seen. And he walked out of it. Right before his second term, before he was reelected, I went to see him in Mar-a-Lago. The first thing he said to me was, “Bibi, we’ve got to make sure that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons.” He said that to me. I didn’t say it to him. He didn’t need any convincing there either.
Republican presidential candidate, former president Donald Trump hosts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate, July 26, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Now, why did he say that? Because for more than four decades, this regime, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, is chanting, “Death to Israel, death to America.” But they say Israel is only the small Satan standing in their way. The great Satan is the United States of America.
And these ideological fanatics, these lunatics, they find their raison d’être, their reason for being, is wiping out Western civilization and America that leads it. They have claimed the lives, they’ve maimed and wounded, thousands of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. They killed the American Marines in Beirut. They bombed your embassies. They tried to assassinate the American president, Donald Trump, not once but twice. Now they blackmail for oil.
Imagine if these lunatics had nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to every American city and every European city and everywhere around the globe. This is a danger for the entire world. It’s certainly a danger for Israel. It’s certainly a danger for America. We see eye to eye on that, President Trump and I
Just imagine what they would do, what they’re capable of doing, if these lunatics had nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to every American city and every European city and everywhere around the globe.
This is a danger for the entire world. It’s certainly a danger for Israel. It’s certainly a danger for America. We see eye to eye on that — President Trump and I, Israel and America.
But I think if people are honest, if leaders are honest, they would understand that we’re not only fighting our fight, we’re fighting their fight. I speak to dozens of world leaders. Dozens. They all know that. And privately, they all say that. They say that privately, but I say it publicly.
The world owes a debt of deep indebtedness, deep indebtedness, to President Trump for leading this effort to safeguard our future. Thank you.
Netanyahu takes a first question, which is largely inaudible, about the next Iranian leadership.
You want a transitional leader that will have a transition. You don’t want to replace one ayatollah with another. You don’t want to replace Hitler with Himmler. So I think the question is, Will the conditions be created for such a change? I think it’s too early to say, and I think in the final account, as I said, it’s up to the Iranian people to show that — to choose the moment, and to rise to the moment. We can create the conditions, but they have to, you know, they have to exploit those conditions at a certain point.
It is often said that you can’t win, you can’t do revolutions from the air. That is true. You can’t do it only from the air. You can do a lot of things from the air, and we’re doing, but there has to be a ground component as well. There are many possibilities for this ground component, and I take the liberty of not sharing with you all those possibilities.
Will you recognize Reza Pahlavi if the people keep chanting for him in the streets?
Well, I’m not going to say what, who specifically is going to be there, but I think he’s been a force for good. He’s been trying to get the people to unite for a transitional government, a democratic transitional government, or a moderate transitional government. I hope that one comes to being, I think it’s too early to say.
Supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, show a poster of him as they attend a demonstration during the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on February 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
A question about ending the war and ostensibly dragging the US into war.
Well, I think we have concrete goals on how to do it, how to end it. We want to, as I said, decimate the ballistic missile program, which we’re doing; decimate the nuclear program, which we’re doing. I think that those are goals that are achievable, but I’m not going to put a schedule or a stopwatch on it. I think we have goals that have to be achieved, and we’re not counting the days.
This canard that we dragged the United States into it, is not just a canard, it’s ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous. President Trump said it best, and I said it as well many times: There’s always a danger in acting, but in conditions of existential threats, there’s a much greater danger in not acting
But I will say this: This canard that we dragged the United States into it, is not just a canard, it’s ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous. I mean, I think President Trump said it best, and I said it as well many times: There’s always a danger in acting, but in conditions of existential threats, there’s a much greater danger in not acting.
What do you think would have happened if America did not act now? Just imagine what would have happened. In a few months’ time, no more than a year, Khamenei, still alive, would have ordered the beginnings of the new nuclear program, and the reconstructed ballistic missile program, to move underground. Now, it’ll take them a little time, maybe a few years, but you can’t reach those programs. And they develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, okay? That means missiles that can hit Chicago and New York and Florida and Texas and California. Oh, but they don’t have it yet, that’s what people say. Right, let’s wait. Just let them do it, you know, just wait, wait and let them do it.
Illustrative: In this image released by the official website of the Iranian Defense Ministry, July 25, 2023, Abu Mahdi naval cruise missiles are displayed in a ceremony to deliver the missiles to both national Navy as well as navy of the Revolutionary Guard, Iran. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)
You won’t be able to do it. It’s the last moment. No, it takes a little time. I mean, you had a few months to prevent them from doing it and to just decimate these industries and perhaps achieve this transitional government in Iran. So you’d sit back and you’d say, well, it’s not going to happen next Thursday, so let’s not act.
I tell you that there is enormous risk in not acting, much greater risk than acting. And if you think that the oil markets are in trouble today, think of Iran with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Then think of the blackmail that you would endure.
Inaudible question.
I’m not going to speak about the full battle plans that we have with the United States. We’re well coordinated with them. I will say this, that once we achieve our goals, then I have argued, I think, and Americans understand this very well, because we’re real partners, I think that what has to be done is to have alternative routes.
Instead of going through the chokepoints of the Hormuz Straits and the Bab-al-Mandab Straits in order to have the flow of oil, just have oil pipelines, gas pipelines going west through the Arabian Peninsula right up to Israel, right up to our Mediterranean ports, and you’ve just done away with the chokepoints for forever. That is definitely possible.
So I see that as a real change that will follow this war, but I also see this war ending a lot faster than people think. I think you have to, in war, you have to grit your teeth. Churchill said that democracies suffer from the slumber of democracy. Disease, as he called it. And they only wake up, he said, they may wake up only when they hear the gong, the jarring gong of danger, is the way he put it. Well, you’re hearing the jarring gong of danger. The jarring gong of danger is: Iran gets nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. That’s not a jarring gong. That is an apocalypse. Don’t let it happen.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian listens to explanations as he visits the country’s nuclear achievements during his tour to the Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran, Iran, in a photo released on November 2, 2025. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP)
And the function of leaders is to stand and tell people the truth, even when things are uncomfortable. That’s what you have to do. And you don’t always see the danger in time, but leaders are tasked with the task of seeing danger in time and acting on it.
And I hope that in time, people will see the wisdom and the courage of President Trump’s decision, and his leadership, and the fact that we’re working together. America is not fighting for Israel. America is fighting with Israel for a common goal: to protect our future, to protect civilization against these barbarians.
Fact number one, Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound. Fact number two, President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding off
Question: President Trump said today he did not like the Israeli strike on the Iranian gas fields. My question to you: Was the president aware of Israel striking that gas field? Did he approve it? And please, if you may, do you see any signs that the Iranian regime is collapsing? And what assurances do you give the Israeli public that if it does stand on its feet, we will not see another wave of war with Iran in maybe 5 or 10 years?
Well, I’ll say two things. Fact number one, Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound. Fact number two, President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding off.
Footage shows the aftermath of an IDF strike on the South Pars gas field on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, in Asaluyeh, Iran, on March 18, 2026. (Social media, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Are there any signs that the Iranian regime is cracking? A lot of signs. A lot of signs. I wish I could divulge all of them, but I see that. But will I tell you, will I commit right now that it’s going to collapse? I can tell you that we’re working to create the conditions for it to collapse, but it may survive, it may not. If it survives, it’ll be a lot weaker. There’s no comparison. It’ll be at its weakest point, shorn of industries that it built over decades, death industries, shorn of many other capabilities that they have, and equipped with the experience, with the knowledge, that if they try it again, they’ll be hit again even harder.
I cannot tell you of the technological developments that we are engaged in, to anticipate this and other possibilities. But Israel has shown that it can do wondrous things, and in partnership with our American allies, we can do amazing things.
As Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, said, these are the two most amazing air forces in the world. It’s the two most amazing intelligence services in the world. It has the capabilities to confront these barbarians and to outstrip them both in innovation and, when necessary, in lethality. It’s directed, it’s targeted lethality. It’s going against the killers and as much as possible to avoid civilian casualties.
(L) US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and (R) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine arrive for a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on March 19, 2026 (Mandel NGAN / AFP)
We have those capacities, we’re building them for the future. That is what safeguards the future.
You know, if people want to be naive, then they don’t see the kind of world we’re living in. In this world, it’s not enough to be moral. It’s not enough to be just. It’s not enough to be right. You know, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, someone that I admire a lot, was the historian Will Durant. Now, he wrote many volumes. I read most of them. He also wrote The Lessons of History, a very brief, 100-page book, in which he said, well, history proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation.
So you have no choice. If you look at the world as it is today, you have to be blind not to see that the democracies led by the United States have to reassert their will to defend themselves. And to oppose their enemies in time, while there’s still time, before the jarring gong of danger wakes them up and wakes them up too late. This is where we are now.
The fact that people don’t see that, the fact that a lot of the news media are harking on a lot of fake news, but also a lot of shortsightedness, and do not see the historic period and the historic struggle that we are engaged in now, doesn’t obviate these truths.
We are, we have to be strong. We have to be armed. We have to be more powerful than the barbarians, or they will not be merely at the gate. They’ll crash our gates and destroy our societies. That’s what Israel is doing now with the United States. And I’m very proud of the fact that the Israeli people are standing strong, that the Israeli army is standing strong.
We rose from October 7th. Our people, our soldiers, rose like lions. But in protecting ourselves and in joining with our great American friends, we’re also protecting the entire world.
Given the escalation of attacks on US allies across the Gulf, given the spiraling energy costs, the high cost in general, the US service personnel killed in this war, many Americans are asking that question, whether you misled their government into starting this war, and for how long should Americans keep paying the price?
Well, I misled no one, and I didn’t have to convince President Trump about the need to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program, putting it underground, and being able to launch nuclear-tipped missiles at the United States. He understood that. He explained it to me. I didn’t explain it to him. And I think that our partnership is the only way to avoid this catastrophic development.
Freedom is precious. It has its costs. But if you’re not prepared to defend it, if you’re not prepared to resist the tyrannies that are trying to arm themselves with the weapons of mass death, you will have no future
The loss of servicemen is painful. Early on in my military service, a fellow soldier died in my arms. I lost a brother who fought terrorists, who led the historic Entebbe rescue. The cost to bereaved families is enormous, and I sympathize and send the condolences of the people of Israel to these families and to the American people.
Freedom is precious. It has its costs. But if you’re not prepared to defend it, if you’re not prepared to resist the tyrannies that are trying to arm themselves with the weapons of mass death, you will have no future. And therefore, we’re doing what we can. As far as oil prices rising. Spikes. You know what a spike is? You know what a spike is? It goes up and it goes down. The Americans are working very hard, and we’re trying to help them in every way that we can, to open the Straits of Hormuz. And if they succeed, which I think they will, then oil prices will come down.
But if you say, all right, I’m suffering right now — and people are — then I shouldn’t do anything, I should just succumb to the blackmail, let Iran get on with it, let them develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them to New York and Los Angeles, then you’re going to be blackmailed in ways that you can’t even imagine.
I think what this war has done is unmask what Iran is. You know, we’ve said for years, look at these people. They’re doing things that normal regimes do not do. I don’t hear even adversaries of the United States chanting death to America, death to the Great Satan, massacring tens of thousands of their own people at will, like that in 2 days.
The total and utter ruthlessness of this regime, makes it uniquely dangerous, uniquely dangerous not only to Israel and to the United States, but to everything in between and far beyond
You have that sometimes, but the combination, the combination of fanaticism, deep ideological lunacy, there’s no other way to call it, the total and utter ruthlessness of this regime, makes it uniquely dangerous, uniquely dangerous not only to Israel and to the United States, but to everything in between and far beyond.
And the fact that this is not recognized. You ask me, okay, what do people think? What did they think in the ’30s? What did they think in the ’30s when you had a terrible, ruthless, killer regime led by a lunatic, that took one country after the other, did it very sequentially? What did they say? They said what? They said, ‘Let’s stay out of this. It’s not our war. It’s not our problem. Maybe it’s only the Jews.’
Have we learned nothing? Absolutely nothing in these 80 years? We cannot see the danger that lurks? It doesn’t lurk. It’s risen from the mud. It’s right in our face. It’s splattering blood right at us. I can’t believe that we’re clueless. We’re not clueless. I talk to many American friends. They’re not clueless. They understand this. Some don’t. Some are adamantly opposed, but many are adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
Israeli security and rescue forces inspect the damage at the scene where a missile fired from Iran at Israel killed two people and caused damage in Ramat Gan, central Israel, March 18, 2026. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
But I can tell you that I’ve spoken, as I said a minute ago, I’ve spoken to many, many leaders. We’re talking about dozens and dozens of leaders. And they all say the same thing: I understand it. Some of them come out and say it. They’re bold. And some of them say, You know, I don’t know, you know, I wish, I understand it, but some of my people don’t, or my news media are against me, and so on.
I was glad to see in the United States that an enormous number, enormous percentage of President Trump supporters, traditional supporters, understand it. And I hope that my friends and colleagues of many years on the other side of the aisle, those who understand and agree with what I just said, and there are quite a few of them, have the courage to come out and say it.
Because at the end, at the end, what is the task of leaders if you’re a leader? The most important thing, the most important thing, is to assure the security of your people. And that means identifying danger in time. And acting against it. That is a prerequisite for the survival of any biological organism. You have to identify danger in time and act in time against it. You either fight or flight. These are the two options you have.
Where can you flee? Nowhere, because Iran can reach any part of the world. So you have to, at a certain point, fight. And this is the juncture where we’ve reached — in time. Not too late, but in time.
I just will encourage all those who agree with what President Trump is saying, with what I’m saying, to act. I didn’t have to convince President Trump of anything. He didn’t need any convincing. He acted as a great leader does, to protect his country and to protect the future.
Mr. Prime Minister, Hezbollah has opened up another front against Israel, launching rockets against Israeli civilians. Now, ground troops are inside Lebanon. Is there any hesitancy toward launching a full ground operation to eradicate Hezbollah? And what would eradicating Hezbollah do to transform Israel-Lebanon relations and the greater Middle East?
Look, Alex, I can’t divulge our battle plans. Obviously, Hezbollah is not what Hezbollah had been. I said in my opening remarks in Hebrew that they’re, you know, they were talking about 150,000 rockets and missiles that they had, ballistic missiles. They had thousands of Radwan terrorists right next to our fence, underground, ready to invade. We knocked them back. We destroyed the bulk of their missile capacity in six hours. We knocked out Nasrallah.
Home Front Command search and rescue soldiers operate at the site of a rocket impact in Kiryat Shmona, March 19, 2026. (Israel Defense Forces)
We destroyed all the Hamas, or rather all the Radwan, infrastructure right next to our border. We now have a security corridor, a security zone, that is there that prevents this kind of invasion. And we have plans for the future.
Obviously, our number one effort is geared towards Iran. If the regime goes, you know that Hezbollah goes. But in any case, we’re devising our plans in such a way that we could remove this threat as well.
You assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader and dozens of other senior Iranian officials. The result of that so far has been the appointment of a new supreme leader considered to be even more hardline than his father. The Iranian regime is not showing any signs of collapse as of now. What do you say to those who say that killing those individuals is in fact empowering the hardliners in Iran? And are you confident that your strategy will still lead to regime change.
And then secondly, if I may, you’ve also indicated today that you made a commitment to President Trump not to strike these oil and gas facilities in the future. Should President Trump come to you one day and say oil prices are too high, it’s time to end this war, will you listen to him? And do you need the United States in order to continue this campaign alone?
Was that a single question? Jeremy really hogged it, but I’ll answer your questions.
I’m not sure who’s running Iran right now. Mojtaba, the replacement ayatollah, has not shown his face. Have you seen them? We haven’t.
This handout picture provided by the office of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) shows him during an address in Tehran on February 17, 2026. (Handout / KHAMENEI.IR / AFP); Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a demonstration to mark Jerusalem Day in Tehran, May 31, 2019. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Reuters)
And we can’t vouch for exactly what is happening there. There is a cloud here. It’s not clear. What we see is that there is a lot of tension inside the people who are edging for the top. It’s not the uniform position. You see that sometimes with the contradictory orders that are given. You know, they do one thing and then they withdraw it and so on.
I think it’s important that they know that if they think they’re going to target the world, target the president of the United States and so on, they themselves are being targeted. That creates a lot of uncertainty. We’ve found that that can have an effect.
Nasrallah has never really been replaced because some people are not replaceable. I think the authority and the hold that Khamenei has had is not going to be translated to anyone, not to Mojtaba if he’s there, not to anyone else.
But I think this is part of the effort to crack the regime. It’s not going to happen in one day. We’re 20 days into this war. Yes, we’re seeing cracks. We’re seeing cracks, and we’re trying to propagate them as fast as we can. Not only in the top command, we’re seeing cracks in the field.
It’s sort of like a hollowed-out, rotten piece of wood that’s holding on the outside, but there’s a lot of rot inside
You know, it’s sort of like a hollowed-out, rotten piece of wood that’s holding on the outside, but there’s a lot of rot inside. We’re seeing some defections. We’re seeing fear and trepidation in the IRGC units that are manning the ballistic missiles. You know why? Because they’re afraid to die. They’re not all suicidal. In fact, most of them are not. So we’re seeing cracks, but we’re going to hit them again and again.
The minimum thing we want to do is, again, erase the industrial capacity that they had to produce these weapons. They’ll have to build it from a start, and that’s very hard. It’s very hard to do underground. So they’re not going to be able to just take the pieces and move them below the earth. It’s going to be a lot harder for them. But ideally, if it cracks enough, and with some other things that I won’t get into, yes, the regime could change. Is it guaranteed? No. And is it up to the Iranian people in the final accounting to make use of the conditions that we’re doing, weakening this regime? We’ll see. I cannot tell you.
They’re very brave, by the way. I don’t come and criticize them in any way. I think they’re very brave. I think they’ve suffered enormously. And the question is, will we have a meeting ground between the weakening of the regime and the rising of the people in many ways that could develop? We’ll see.
On the oil and gas questions, I can only tell you this. I don’t think any two leaders have been as coordinated as President Trump and I. He’s the leader. I’m, you know, his ally. America is the leader. Israel is, as the national security memorandum described us, I think a month ago, six weeks ago, I think something like that, they called Israel the model ally. That’s how they call it, the model ally. It’s not a superpower.
But America is seeking around the world, and you hear it from the speeches of President Trump and others in the administration, they say, where are you? You know, we’ve helped you all these years, where are you when we’re doing something that is as important, at least as important for you, as it is important for us?
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir (left) meets with US CENTCOM chief Adm. Brad Cooper at the Israeli military’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, January 24, 2026. (Israel Defense Forces)
And yet one country is there. And against all the vilifications that are leveled at Israel— ‘Israel is sponging off America and all that’ — no, it’s not. It’s not. Israel is a brave country, a resolute country, with an incredible army, incredible soldiers, incredible courage, and we’re fighting alongside the United States when the chips are down. We’re fighting with the United States. We’re fighting for a common goal.
So I can tell you that that’s the most important coordination. But in practice, President Trump and I speak regularly. You know, we discuss things, our staff discuss things, our militaries are in close coordination as never before. But ultimately, President Trump makes his own decisions. And do I respect them? Yes, I do.