Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the United States are “beyond the halfway point in terms of success” in their war against Iran, saying that the joint strikes are focusing on the country’s nuclear material.
He added that he doesn’t want to “put a schedule on” the timeline for ending the war with Iran.
In an interview with the right-wing American media outlet Newsmax, Netanyahu said the Iranian regime is “pursuing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities,” adding, “That’s what this war is about – preventing that outcome.”
The Israeli prime minister also said that the attacks have “already degraded their missile capabilities, destroyed factories, and eliminated key nuclear scientists.”
Iran “killed and maimed more Americans than any other force in recent decades,” Netanyahu told Newsmax, saying Tehran also tried to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thousands and thousands killed and maimed in Afghanistan by Iranian IEDs. They bombed our embassies. They tried to kill President Trump twice. They’re still trying to kill him.”
According to Netanyahu, Iran has openly shown it is a threat to the West. “Most importantly, is they they chant ‘Death to America.’ They also say ‘Death to Israel.’ But they say America is the Great Satan. They’re religious zealots, and they have to wipe out Western culture led by America,” he said.
Netanyahu also said Iran is more dangerous to the United States than North Korea, China and Russia. “I don’t hear North Korea chanting ‘Death to America.’ I don’t hear China chanting … I don’t hear Russia,” he said.
“And the question is, will the West wake up? And because it’s not obvious. Churchill called it ‘the slumber of democracies,'” Netanyahu continued.
“And I’ve tried to say that to them. Well, I hope they’re waking up now. But I’ll tell you, one man who woke up – he didn’t need waking up – it’s Donald Trump. He said 40 years ago – he said Iran is the great danger … he said, this regime has to be, you know, has to be confronted.”
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According to the Israeli prime minister, Trump has “talked to me about the need to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons … he was very clear on that. He walked out of the disastrous Iran deal that paved Iran’s way with gold towards a nuclear arsenal.”
Israel began striking Iranian steel factories to disrupt weapon production and cash flow, Netanyahu said.
“The steel plants are controlled by the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who are basically the terror apparatus that controls Iran,” he said. “They take the revenue there. … You’re really attacking the war machine of the Revolutionary Guards. It’s like taking factories out of the SS.”
Netanyahu also told Newsmax that Israel Police blocked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate Palm Sunday mass earlier this week because of Iranian missile fire. “What happened was that the Iranians have been firing missiles at the Old City of Jerusalem, where you have the Al-Aqsa mosque,” he said.
“And the fragments nearly hit the church of the Holy Sepulchre. So as a result, the Israeli security authorities said, okay, let’s take out the worshipers right now because they’d be hurt.”
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Debris from a missile interception in Jerusalem’s Old City, in March. Credit: Israel Police
Debris from a missile interception in Jerusalem’s Old City, in March. Credit: Israel Police
Two weeks ago, debris from Iranian ballistic missiles intercepted over Israel fell in Jerusalem’s Old City, including near some of the city’s religious sites, police said. Israel closed the holy sites for visitors a week before the incident.
Haaretz Podcast’Our fate is in Trump’s hands’: Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn on Israel’s ‘unprecedented’ wartime dependence on the U.S.
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‘Our fate is in Trump’s hands’: Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn on Israel’s ‘unprecedented’ wartime dependence on the U.S.
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“And that was the reason that a police officer on duty said, ‘Oh, okay, I’m applying it also to the patriarch.’ Now, look, I think that was… I can understand the concern for his safety,” Netanyahu told Newsmax. “And that was the only concern. There was no malice here, no bad intention, unlike the press reports.”
The prime minister said he oppposes “this fallacy, this lie, this vilification that Israel is against Christians when Israel is the only country in the Middle East and one of the few countries in the world that stands up for Christians, whether they’re oppressed in Nigeria or they’re oppressed in Syria, or they’re oppressed anywhere else in the Middle East – we protect them.”