Michael Leiter, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, spoke to Fox News on Wednesday about the ties between Israel and the US amid speculations that the war in Iran could resume.
Asked about the conversation between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the day before, Leiter said, “Well, actually, it was a rather short conversation, and it wasn't very dramatic. Many of the conversations are long and somewhat dramatic. But look, the president and the prime minister go back some 40 years. They have a very close personal relationship. They have a tremendous degree of respect for each other. And obviously, as things unravel in the negotiations with Iran, the prime minister and the president talk and discuss what the possibilities are."
Leiter added, “And as the president said, if we'll be asked to go back into kinetic activity with the United States side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, wing-to-wing, we're ready to do it. We consider ourselves your model ally and junior partner. What the president decides will fall in line."
Asked how the impasse is broken given that the Iranians continue to propose ideas that are unacceptable to the United States and Israel, the Ambassador replied, “People are surprised when they discover that people who murder people also happen to lie. The Ayatollahs are mass murderers. They killed 40,000 of their own people just a few months ago, and they lie. So any potential deal would always have to be completely verifiable."
“The people of Iran want change. The people of the region want change," continued Leiter. “If there's a deal which will allow Iran to continue to pursue nuclear weapons, the capability to pursue nuclear weapons, if there's a deal that would include a ballistic missile program that could continue to hold the countries in the region hostage, or if there's a deal which would allow Iran to continue to fund its proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas, all intent on the destruction not only of Israel but of domination of the region, that would be a bad deal."
“And we're quite confident that the president of the United States, the leader of the free world who has a full appreciation for the responsibilities of the United States in the present situation, would never allow a deal like that to take place," he added.
Leiter was asked about CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper’s comments that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis “have been cut off from the decades-long flow of military supplies and thus mitigating and eliminating any chance of a future October 7th."
“Well, it is a major accomplishment of our brave soldiers in the IDF," replied the Ambassador. “We're now sitting in Gaza, we're sitting in southern Lebanon, and we're not going to move until there's an insurance that we can't have October 7th again. We cannot have jihadis that are proxies of Iran sitting on our borders. They make no secret of their intent to destroy our country, to slaughter as many people as possible. That's what happened October 7th. They keep repeating they'd like to do it again."
He clarified, “So we don't have territorial ambitions in any of these places. We have one ambition and that's to provide security for our people. Since then, we've been accused of the most horrific things of genocide and starvation and so on. None of that happened. It was a big, bold lie. It was a blood libel against the people of Israel."