[IsraelTimes] PM confirms that a ‘specific component’ in Iran’s nuclear program was hit in last month’s strikes, in Knesset speech repeatedly interrupted by family members of hostages
Speaking nearly two weeks after the US election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly criticized the Biden administration’s judgment and policies at major junctions in Israel’s ongoing war against Iran and its proxies.
“The US had reservations and suggested that we not enter Gaza,” said Netanyahu in the Knesset plenum on Monday. “It had reservations about entering Gaza City, Khan Younis, and, most critically, strongly opposed entry into Rafah.”
Administration officials had publicly urged Israel to calibrate its Rafah offensive to minimize civilian harm.
“President Biden told me that if we go in, we will be alone,” Netanyahu said. “He also said that he would stop shipments of important weapons to us. And so he did. A few days later, [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken appeared and repeated the same things and I told him — we will fight with our nails.”
The US withheld a single shipment of 2,000-lb bombs, allowing all other weapon transfers to continue.
Netanyahu also criticized US positions after Iran’s drone and missile attacks on Israel: “Again, we were told by our friend that there is no need to respond. And I said that sitting and not reacting is not acceptable, and we responded.”
‘SPECIFIC COMPONENT’ IN IRAN NUKE PROGRAM HIT
The prime minister said that the Israeli response last month took out air defense batteries and “inflicted real damage on Iran’s ballistic missile production capability,” as well as targeting its nuclear program.
“It’s not a secret, it has been published,” Netanyahu said. “There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack.”
However, Netanyahu added that Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon has not been blocked. “We’ve delayed it… but it has progressed” over the past few years, he said. Iran has “advanced its enrichment; it still has a long way to go in other areas.” The imperative to stop Iran’s march to the bomb “is on us,” he said.
Israel’s April strike on Iran, Netanyahu said, took out one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran. In October, Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries and caused serious damage to Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce solid fuel, which is used in long-range ballistic missiles.
Last week, the Axios news site revealed that Israel destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin during last month’s attack on Iran.
Addressing attempts to reach a ceasefire in Lebanon, Netanyahu said: “The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be put down on paper.”
Rather, he said, “We will be compelled to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks… even after a ceasefire,” to keep it from rebuilding.
Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached, and stressed: “We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6, 2023.”
HOPES FOR PROGRESS ON HOSTAGES
Netanyahu’s address was interrupted repeatedly by opposition lawmakers and by protesters in the gallery who laid out posters with the faces of hostages held in Gaza. Some were ejected by Knesset security.
Netanyahu told the Knesset plenum that he had met with aides and members of security services until 3 a.m. a night earlier to discuss new ways to get hostages home.
“To date, we have brought back 154,” he said. “117 alive, and another 37, unfortunately, no longer alive.”
He argued that senior US officials agree that maximum pressure must be applied on Hamas so that it will back off its “unrealistic” demands for a deal.
One challenge of the war that we won’t give up on, he said, is “how to extract from those murderers, from Hamas, how to extract from those tunnels, the rest of our hostages… Victory includes freeing the hostages. And we will achieve it as well,” he said.
“We will bring home dozens more hostages, I hope in the near future.”
He said the focus now is on harming Hamas’s ability to rule Gaza — a claim he has made for months.
“I asked the IDF to come up with an orderly plan to eradicate the governmental capacity, which is related to the denial of their ability to distribute humanitarian aid,” he said. “We want to ensure that the humanitarian aid is not looted by Hamas and others.”
‘THE PUBLIC IS NOT STUPID’
As he has done repeatedly in recent weeks, Netanyahu blasted the “countless leaks from the cabinet and the negotiating team.”
“The leaks seriously harm the chance of obtaining a deal for the release of hostages, they delay the release of our hostages,” he said.
While Netanyahu did not refer to the ongoing investigation of the alleged theft of IDF intelligence documents and the suspected leak of one of the documents by his former aide Eli Feldstein — who has been in detention for three weeks — he implied that there is a discriminatory focus in what the law enforcement authorities choose to investigate.
“I have called time after time for the phenomenon [of leaks from the cabinet and negotiating team] to be investigated,” he said. “I asked, how can it be that leaks that cause immense damage to the State of Israel are not investigated? I was told: You need to send a letter. So I sent a letter, setting out a range of terrible, criminal leaks, that do tremendous harm to Israel.”
He continued, “And yet, as of this moment, nobody has been investigated and nobody has been arrested [for those leaks]. Nobody’s life has been ruined,” he says, another implied reference to the ongoing detention of Feldstein. “Everybody understands what’s going on here. Nobody is stupid. The public is not stupid… The people are not stupid.”
Netanyahu says Israel moved up pager attack due to fears it was about to be exposed
[IsraelTimes] Israel decided to activate its pager attack on Hezbollah in September, ahead of time, because it was about to be discovered, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hints strongly in a Knesset speech.
His cabinet initially planned to launch an attack against Hezbollah in October, he says, but had to move up the planning “when our special means was about to be revealed.”
“From the moment I learned that this was about to be revealed, I decided that it was necessary to act immediately,” he claims. “There were those who argued that the US should be informed ahead of time. I argued that the US should not be informed because this could lead to either resistance or a leak, which is the same thing. A leak would have immediately demonstrated the effectiveness of the move. I denied it outright — and we acted.”
Netanyahu says that in the subsequent operations, 70-80 percent of Hezbollah rocket and missile capabilities were destroyed.
He also speaks about his deliberations ahead of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: “A legitimate argument arose that such an action could lead to the expansion of the campaign.”
“There was a completely legitimate debate, and there was also a second demand,” he continues. “The demand was to update and coordinate this attack with the US. Again, with all due respect to our friends in the US, I rejected it outright.”
He says that the debate over whether to strike Nasrallah continued on his September flight to New York ahead of his speech to the UN.
“Two hours later, I called the defense minister and IDF chief of staff, and said that we had to eliminate the man. When we landed in New York, we convened the [security cabinet]. There was almost an absolute majority. One person argued differently, but the entire cabinet got behind it, and we made the decision, it was carried out — and the rest is known.”
Netanyahu says Israel has destroyed all four of Iran’s S-300 batteries
[IsraelTimes] In his speech to the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at length about the results of Israel’s two strikes on Iran, in response to ballistic missile and drone attacks in April and in October.
In response to the April attack, Israel destroyed one of the four S-300 air defense batteries around Tehran, he says.
In the second strike in late October, Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries, he says. Israel struck other air defense systems, and Iran’s missile production capabilities, he continues.
He also confirms an Axios report that the Israeli strikes destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in the Parchin military complex, outside of Tehran. “There is a certain element of the nuclear program that was damaged in this attack.”
Netanyahu says he has spoken about stopping Iran’s nuclear program recently with both US President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.
|
