Rubbishing claims that Israel had guaranteed the United States a victory in Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday termed reports of a “hard-sell” by Tel Aviv in favour of war “incorrect”.
Netanyahu underlined that both he and US President Donald Trump entered the operation with a clear understanding of the risks involved.
“Not only did I note it….We both agreed, you know, that there was both uncertainty and risk involved. And I remember that we — I said, and he said that the danger — there’s danger in action, in taking action. But there’s greater danger in not taking action,” the Israeli PM said in an interview to American news platform CBS News.
The remarks came as the over two-month-old war that began with coordinated US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 continues to define the terms of the alliance that Netanyahu is seeking to restructure.
On Monday, Trump termed the fragile Iran ceasefire as on “life support” and said it had a “1% chance of living”.
In the interview with the Israeli PM, CBS News quoted an investigative article by The New York Times: “In the Situation Room on Feb. 11, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic”. Netanyahu was then asked by CBS’ Major Garrett whether he had suggested victory was guaranteed.
The Times had also reported that Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to a certain victory, including the assertion that the Iranian regime would be “so weakened it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz”. Netanyahu acknowledged that this particular threat took time to be fully understood.
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“I think – I’m not sure it was misread. But the – you know, there’s a great risk for Iran to do it. And it took a while for them to understand how big that risk is, which they understand now.”
Netanyahu conceded: “No, I– I don’t claim– perfect foresight, and nobody had perfect foresight. Neither did the Iranians”.
Israel will end US financial aid in 10 years: Netanyahu
Speaking on CBS’s 60 Minutes programme, Netanyahu said he planned to “draw down to zero the American financial support”, framing it as a reflection of Israel’s economic maturity and not as a break in relations.
“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have. Because we receive – we receive $3.8 billion a year. And I – I think that it’s time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining – military support,” he said.
Netanyahu said Israel was “no longer a client state”.
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“We’re a strategic partner,” and partners “don’t send each other bills; they send each other solutions,” he said.
The Prime Minister confirmed he had discussed the proposal with President Donald Trump, stating that Trump “understands that the strongest alliances are based on mutual strength, not mutual dependence.”
On a timeline, Netanyahu said: “I said, let’s start now and do it over the next decade, over the next ten years, but I want to start now. I don’t want to wait for the next Congress. I want to start now.”
War not over: Netanyahu
Despite a ceasefire, Netanyahu was unambiguous that the conflict is not finished. “I think it accomplished a great deal, but it’s not over, because there’s still nuclear material, enriched – uranium that has to be taken out of – Iran. There are still – enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that – Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still – want to produce. Now, we’ve degraded a lot of it. But all that is still there, and there’s work to be done.”
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When pressed on how that uranium would be removed, the prime minister was direct: “You go in, and you take it out.” He declined to specify whether the mission would involve Israeli or American special forces, but said Trump had privately expressed the same intention. “What President Trump has said to me, ‘I want to go in there.’ And I think it can be done physically. That’s not the problem. If you have an agreement, and you go in, and you take it out, why not? That’s the best way.”
What about Hezbollah?
On Lebanon, Netanyahu resisted any Iranian effort to tie the two fronts together. Tehran, he argued, wants a unified ceasefire precisely to preserve Hezbollah. “You know why? Because they want Hezbollah to stay there and continue to torture Lebanon, continue to hold its people hostage.” Asked whether he would accept such a linkage even at Trump’s request, he held firm. “Well, look, he understands what I’m saying.”
He offered a broader theory of how the conflict might ultimately be resolved. “If this regime is indeed weakened or possibly toppled, I think it’s the end of Hezbollah, it’s the end of Hamas, it’s probably the end of the Houthis, because the whole scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran built collapses if the regime in Iran collapses.”
Whether that moment arrives, he conceded, remains an open question. “Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No.”
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(Written by Nityanjali Bulsu, who is an intern at The Indian Express)
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