During an appearance on Newsmax’s "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the ongoing conflict involving the US, Israel, and Iran was largely driven by the fact that Tehran was "on the verge of making nuclear weapons."
Netanyahu noted that the timeline for Iran acquiring a bomb was dangerously narrow. To neutralize the issue, preemptive strikes were necessary.
"We pushed that immediate threat away. We destroyed a lot of their infrastructure, a lot of their centrifuges, a lot of the associated factories and facilities that they use for manufacturing nuclear weapons," the Prime Minister explained.
Additionally, he said, targeted operations severely impacted human capital within the Iranian weapons program.
"We knocked out 20 of their top nuclear scientists - 20 of their top nuclear scientists. So we pushed it back considerably."
Though the immediate capacity for a weapon has been dismantled, Netanyahu cautioned that the ambition of the regime is still intact.
"It's like when you excise a lump of cancer from your body, you know it may come back. But you know one thing: If you wouldn't do it, you could die," he remarked. "And Israel was obviously placed with an existential threat. And America was threatened with a very great danger."
He highlighted that providing intercontinental ballistic missiles to a nation where a segment of the public shouts "death to America" would ultimately endanger "every single American," particularly if those missiles carried nuclear payloads.
Turning to regional diplomacy, the Israeli leader expressed strong reservations regarding the prospect of the United States supplying advanced F-35 fighter jets to Turkey.
"I think it's a mistake," Netanyahu stated to Newsmax. He pointed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's aggressive posture toward Greece, the ongoing occupation of northern Cyprus, and the Turkish government's calls for the eradication of Israel.
"His number two a few days ago said the Jewish state has no place among the nations," Netanyahu added. "If this regime that often condemns America and often attacks America verbally should have the weapons like the F-35, I think it will greatly destabilize the region."
Despite recent tension, Netanyahu maintained that his relationship with President Donald Trump remains strong, noting that Trump has "said it couldn't be better."
"But as you say, friends can have agreements and disagreements," he acknowledged. "We agree on just about everything, but there are areas of disagreement. I just mentioned one of them, which is providing F-35s to Turkey."
He characterized their diplomatic exchanges as candid and transparent.
"I feel confident enough in our friendship, in our alliance, that I can tell him what I think is important for the interests of protecting Israel," he explained. "And he tells me what he thinks is important for the interests of the United States. This is a real friendship, a real alliance."
Addressing the ongoing security situation in Gaza, Netanyahu emphasized to Newsmax that neither Israel nor the US is willing to compromise with the Hamas terrorist organization.
"They don't want to disarm, and they certainly don't want Gaza to be demilitarized. They just want to continue tyrannizing the Gaza population there and launching terrorist raids into Israel," he observed. "They can't do that right now because we're enveloping them with our brave soldiers."
Concluding the interview, the prime minister lauded the United States for its historical and current efforts to champion global liberty.
"The United States of America has been the sentinel of security and peace and freedom," he declared. "And if it weren't for the United States, Nazism could have won. Stalinism could have won," he said, adding, "And we would have entered into a dark age for God knows how many hundreds of years."
Expressing profound gratitude on behalf of his nation, Netanyahu finished with a tribute to American leadership: "The United States has been the guardian of freedom, and we in Israel, a free democratic country, we salute the United States."