Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he has ordered the Israel Defense Forces, Mossad and other security branches to pursue the overthrow of the Iranian regime, calling it the only way to eliminate Tehran’s nuclear threat.
“There is only one way to eliminate this threat once and for all: to overthrow the Iranian regime. And that is my directive to the IDF, the Mossad and the security branches,” Netanyahu said at an IDF officer graduation ceremony.
“As long as they are here, as long as they strive to acquire horrible weapons, the State of Israel will face an existential threat,” Netanyahu said. “And our duty, the duty of all of us, is to save the nation.”
Netanyahu said Iran resumed its nuclear program after Operation Rising Lion, seeking to bury the project deep under a mountain. That triggered the joint Israeli-US Operation Roaring Lion, he said, the first strike of which killed Ali Khamenei.
The prime minister accused Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father after Ali Khamenei’s death in an Israeli strike on February 28, of following in his father’s footsteps. “He pulled the safety pin and Iran is once again trying to develop the bombs of death,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said US President Donald Trump also favored overthrowing the Iranian regime, citing his comments that “we are ready to finish the job” but that he would only do so with Israel.
“We will remove the head of the octopus, and we will finally cut off its arms, the rest of its arms, we will eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said. “And I can tell you that many of our neighbors hope for it, in Lebanon, in Gaza and certainly in Iran. In Iran, they hope for Israel’s victory.”
Addressing the graduating officers, Netanyahu called toppling the Iranian regime “now also your mission” and urged them “to eliminate the Axis of Evil once and for all.”
Also speaking at the graduation ceremony, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that “Iran will burn” if the Islamic Republic launches an attack on the Jewish state.
Katz said Tehran and its proxies were seeking to carry out terrorist attacks to influence the outcome of the October 27 Knesset elections.
“The Iranian regime is at its weakest point and we recognize that this weakness could lead it to take the most extreme measures, including against the State of Israel,” the defense minister said.
“Our message to the Iranian regime is clear,” Katz continued. “We identify your attempts, we are ready to thwart them and ready to strike you with all their might. »
Anyone who attacks Israel “before or after the elections,” Katz said, “will pay the heaviest price.”
Trump also touted strikes against Iran in remarks shared Wednesday by the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account.
“I think it’s one of the greatest things we’ve done: We stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” he said. “It took a lot of courage to do it because no other president was willing to do it.”
In separate remarks Wednesday, Trump said a development involving Iran could come “pretty quickly” but gave conflicting versions of negotiations with Tehran.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Trump said NewsNation correspondent Libbey Dean that negotiations were continuing “a little bit.”
Pressed further, he said: “We are not negotiating with (Iran). We are going to get something one way or another. It will happen quite soon.”
“Most people seem to think it will be after the election; we’ll see what happens,” he added.
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