Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference this evening (Monday), in which he responded for the first time to the disgraceful agreement between the US and Iran and its consequences.
Prime Minister Fatah: "Dear citizens of Israel, for decades I have been fighting Iran's efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons. I can define it as my life's mission. I have stood by it to this day, and I will stand by it in the future as well. With an agreement, without an agreement - Iran will not have nuclear weapons. Not today, and not tomorrow. As long as I am the Prime Minister of Israel - it will not happen.".
I hear people asking: What have we achieved? And I answer them: "What have we achieved"? We have removed the threat of immediate annihilation from us. Together with our American friends, we have embarked on the largest strike mission in the history of Israel. We have thwarted the nuclear scientists, beheaded the leaders of the terrorist regime, crushed the nuclear factories, destroyed missiles and the vast majority of the factories that manufacture missiles, damaged countless industries and military infrastructure, destroyed their navy, their air force, thwarted the Basij commanders who massacred the Iranian people, caused enormous damage - we estimate it at hundreds of billions of dollars, and some estimate it even close to a trillion dollars - enormous damage to the Iranian economy that took them decades to build.
But here's the most important thing - that we saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Because you have to understand, Iran raced to go nuclear right before "the people of the dog." It raced to go nuclear and raced to bury its missile and nuclear industry deep underground.
If we had not acted at the time we acted, and with the intensity with which we acted - also in "Am Kalavi" and then in "Ari's Roar", in historic cooperation with President Trump and the American military - if we had not acted in this way, Iran would already have atomic bombs. And what does it mean? The meaning is that millions of Israeli citizens, you who are listening to me now, all of you were in terrible danger of mass death. We were all in this danger. And we kept this danger, of the elimination of the population of Israel, away from us for years. That is what we achieved - we saved the State of Israel from destruction.
But I tell you, citizens of Israel, the struggle is not over and done with. We will have to continue to stand guard, to continue to be strong and determined to defend ourselves as much as necessary. This is true not only against Iran. It is also true against Iran's terrorist arms, which we have struck in an unprecedented manner. We did it in Gaza, we did it in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, we did it in the refugee camps in Judea and Samaria - we did it everywhere.
We eliminated Daf, Haniyeh and Sinwar along with many of the Hamas leaders. In fact, almost everyone, everyone who was there in the terrible massacre, I think there is one more left, he will also be eliminated. We destroyed thousands of terrorists and countless terrorist infrastructures. We returned all of our hostages from Gaza, down to the last one. No one believed we would do it. I believed.
They told me: Prime Minister, we must give up, don't enter Rafah, end the war. We will bring the hostages, we will frame our exit from Gaza as a victory. I did not accept these empty words. We entered Rafah, we entered Gaza City, contrary to the opinion of many - and we returned all the hostages, down to the last one. And not only that, we blew up the pagers, eliminated the tyrant Nasrallah, prevented the invasion of Radwan's force into the Galilee, we destroyed the vast majority of the 150,000 rockets and missiles that Nasrallah built to destroy Israeli cities.
Do you remember what they told us – 'If we enter into battle with Hezbollah, we will have tens of thousands of dead, the towers will fall in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Beersheba. Israel will become a city of ruins.' You remember that. I didn't accept that, we fought them, and how we fought them, we also captured key positions of theirs like Beaufort, from which Hezbollah threatened the northern settlements for years, in fact the entire country.
At the same time, we did another thing: we established deep security zones around the State of Israel. We did this in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria - where, by the way, we eliminated all the weapons of Assad's army, which was a central link in the axis of evil. And I want to make it clear: We will remain in the security zones as long as necessary to protect our country.
Because after October 7, I established a simple principle: Israel will not allow terrorist organizations to camp on our borders. To dig terror tunnels into our territory, to prepare for a massacre close to our citizens. Today, heroic IDF fighters are separating the terrorists from our citizens. In essence, what we did was change our entire security doctrine. We also changed ourselves. We broke through the barrier of fear. We take the initiative, we attack, we surprise, and we are consistent with our desires.
Israel is stronger than ever, and Iran's axis of evil is weaker than ever. If someone had told you, at the beginning of the war, that we would achieve everything I detailed, and I didn't detail everything - you would have said they were daydreaming. It's good to talk reassuringly, no. We did it.
And today, after we have achieved all this, there are those who want to minimize it, to undo our great achievements. And I tell you - we are going to achieve many more great things. We will continue to thwart threats in space, we will build new alliances with countries in the region and outside the region. We will ensure our weapons independence, this is another principle that I have established and I am putting 350 billion shekels in addition to the defense budget. We will develop technologies that break the boundaries of imagination, and we will make Israel an even stronger power. Because our strength is the key to our future, it is the key to our security, it is the key to our economy, it is the key to our alliances. Because alliances are made with the strong, and Israel today is a very strong country. It is strong thanks to you, the citizens of Israel.
I want to thank you, the citizens of Israel, for your steadfast stance, for the support you give to the government, for the support you give to me as Prime Minister. And above all, I want to thank our heroic soldiers, both regular and reserve, at sea, on land and in the air. In the IDF and in all the security branches. There are no heroes of Israel like you.
"Together we will continue to stand, and together we will continue to win. 'Do not fear my servant Jacob, and do not be dismayed, Israel.' Together, with God's help, we will ensure the eternity of Israel.".
In response to Motti Castel's question about his relationship with President Trump, the Prime Minister said: "Trump is the President of the United States and I am the Prime Minister of Israel. Many times we see things eye to eye, and there are cases where President Trump and I do not see eye to eye. I stand for our security interests and we must act without getting angry. This requires a lot of wisdom and experience. When necessary, I stand firmly for our security interests.".
Netanyahu was asked about the goals of Operation Roaring Harrier. "Who said I was wrong?" he replied when asked about the goal of overthrowing the Iranian terrorist regime. "We removed an existential threat and said that we want to create conditions for the Iranian people to remove this terrorist regime. Iran is in a very difficult economic situation. We have hit all possible infrastructure and the damage is enormous. There are cracks in this regime, no one knows when this regime will fall.".
Netanyahu added: "There is an effort to minimize the achievements. Israel is coming out strong in a wise and firm manner.".
Regarding the confrontation with Trump, he said: "In the US they say Trump does everything I ask, and here they say the opposite - that's not true and that's not true. It happens in the best families.".
The prime minister said in response to a question from Channel 12: "We still don't know what the agreement will be. Every agreement must be accompanied by a credible military threat. During the Obama era, there was no military threat. Today - because we entered with 14,000 sorties - there is a credible military threat against Iran. I have dedicated most of my life to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. We will do what is necessary and I am not limiting myself in any way regarding this goal - Iran will not have nuclear weapons.".
In response to a question from Moav Vardi from Kan News, the Prime Minister lashed out: "You're pumping up failure all day long. How can you compare the situation to before the operation?"'
Lamoria Asraf from Channel 13 when asked if he would run to the end: "I see that you care a lot. So I'm going to run and I intend to win.".
