Netanyahu: an address to the nation

Last night, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the nation. The unedited text.

“Dear citizens of Israel, my brothers and sisters, the campaign is not yet over, but even now it can be clearly stated – we have achieved historic accomplishments.

I want you to remember where we were: Iran tried to squeeze us in a stranglehold; Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, the militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran itself. That is to say, they wanted to choke us, and we are choking them. They threatened us with destruction, and now they are fighting to survive. We struck them. We still have more to do, and I will detail that shortly, but I want to start specifically with Iran itself, specifically with the head of the octopus, because I have dedicated a significant portion of my life to preventing one thing, that this regime of terror achieves nuclear weapons, through which it seeks to annihilate the Jewish state and bring an end to Jewish history.

I spoke about this in Congress, at the UN, and in various parliaments. I authorised all sorts of operations, most of them covert, to delay them, and indeed we delayed them, but the world, the world did not listen. Many said – ‘It’s not that bad’, ‘It’s not even that bad for Iran to have nuclear weapons.’ I heard these voices not only from the outside, I heard them even among us. And I, as the Prime Minister of Israel, the head of the one and only Jewish state, could not accept that. And the great change occurred on that evening of Operation Rising Lion when I announced to you that our daring pilots were flying in the skies of Iran, flying in the skies of Iran and striking targets across all of Iran, we were the first to break the barrier of fear, the fear of acting within Iran itself. I remember my feeling, what excitement, what pride. Chills. And I know that you all experienced it too

We were the first to act because we knew what was at stake. But if I had told you a year ago that our pilots, men and women, would fly in Iran, who would have believed it? If I had told you a year ago that the United States of America, the strongest power in the world, would fight by our side shoulder to shoulder, wing to wing, for nearly 40 days against the common enemy, who would have believed it? But all of this happened because we initiated, we acted, we attacked.

And why did we embark on this campaign? Because Iran was very close to achieving nuclear weapons and achieving the capability to produce missiles, thousands upon thousands of missiles. Not a handful of missiles a day that would fall on us, but many hundreds every single day, two existential threats that we were forced to remove from over our heads.

If we had not launched Operation Rising Lion and later Operation Roaring Lion, Iran would already have atomic bombs, and we prevented that. And I will tell you how we prevented it, because before Rising Lion, I received precise intelligence, in time, and it told us that Iran was starting to act to turn enriched uranium into nuclear weapons. And the moment we received this intelligence, we went into action. We eliminated 12 of their senior nuclear scientists, we attacked their nuclear facilities together with our American friends—you remember the attack on Fordow with the B-2s. What excellent work they did. And we also attacked missile stockpiles and hundreds of launchers. And all of this removed a dual, immediate existential threat from us.

But after Rising Lion, several months later, precise intelligence reached me again, and again in time, and this intelligence showed that Khamenei had ordered the resumption and even the expansion of both the nuclear industry and the missile industry. I use the word ‘industry’ and mean something much more extensive deep underground.

He wanted to hide both the missile production and the nuclear production deep, deep under a high mountain, in such a way that even B-2 planes could not reach them. And again, we could not sit idly by. We went into action. In Roaring Lion, we eliminated another eight nuclear scientists who were dealing with weaponisation, that is, the production of the weapon. Not just the enriched uranium, but the weapon; without it, you cannot produce atomic bombs.

We destroyed the heavy water plant in Arak, we destroyed their entire centrifuge array, and also a uranium production plant. Essentially, we reached a situation where Iran does not have a single active enrichment plant and most of their capability to produce missiles has vanished. They still have missiles; they have a magazine of missiles that is running dry.

In other words, we succeeded here in crushing the nuclear program, crushing the missile program, and we also had an additional goal: To crush the regime in Iran. To weaken it to its lowest, weakest level since the establishment of the regime 47 years ago.

And I want to tell you what we did:

We eliminated the Supreme Leader Khamenei, his de facto successor Larijani, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Intelligence, the Chief of Staff of the Iranian army, the commander of the Quds Force operations unit, the commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, the commanders of the Basij, the top brass of the security establishment, the intelligence leadership, the senior Air Force officers, the person responsible for UAVs, the person responsible for the transfer of funds to terrorist organizations, the commander of the Iranian Navy, the Iranian fleet in the Caspian Sea, dozens of Revolutionary Guard and internal security headquarters, dozens of helicopters and transport planes, the money machine of the Revolutionary Guards, which is the steel industry in Iran and three-quarters of the petrochemical plants in Iran, that is what the Revolutionary Guards live off of. We struck the largest gas production plant in Iran, a fuel depot, bridges, and railways that were used to transport forces and weapons. Dozens of weapon industry factories, and there are many, many more details. I am sparing you, but we did not spare them.

 

We made a giant change here. There are people who say ‘We have no achievements.’ There are giant achievements, and it is reflected in this weakened regime that is begging for a ceasefire. It is reflected in internal conflicts at the top. We know about this; we see their increasing difficulty in meeting the needs of the citizens. It is reflected in the deep weakening of the regime of terror. Iran is no longer the same Iran, and Israel is no longer the same Israel.

 

Those who threatened to destroy us are now fighting for their own survival. And regarding the arms of the octopus, here too, we did great things. First of all, we established a rule: Israel will not tolerate a situation where terrorist organizations sit on its border. Therefore, we created security zones deep in enemy territory; in Gaza, we control over 50% of the territory of the Strip. We are squeezing Hamas from every side, and we will deal with it. In Syria, we are at the summit of Mount Hermon and we reach as far as the Yarmouk, and there we also take care of our Druze brothers, as I promised our allies.

 

In Lebanon, a polar change has occurred. You remember Nasrallah, he used to boast that ‘the Jews are a spider’s web’, so he was eliminated, and what we eliminated along with him was his massive missile arsenal. An arsenal of 150,000 missiles and rockets, the vast majority of which we destroyed in 6 hours. They have some rockets left; we are dealing with that. But they planned another thing: they planned for thousands of Radwan Force terrorists to reach the border line, invade, and conquer the Galilee. We eliminated that.

 

First of all, we killed many of them, we crushed all the underground infrastructure they prepared, the tunnels, the terrorist villages above ground, and we created a security zone of between 8-10 km to remove the anti-tank missile threat from our communities. We are still fighting them; it is not over yet. You saw just a few days ago; we carried out the most powerful operation since the pagers. We eliminated hundreds of terrorists all at once, in ten minutes—and we are still active. It continues all the time. We are fighting Hezbollah and we are determined, I am determined, to return security to the residents of the North. They deserve it just like all the citizens of Israel.

I want to tell you what happened here: As a result of this power we demonstrated, Lebanon turned to us in the last month, turned several times, to start direct peace talks. This has never happened in history; well, it happened once decades ago, but now they turned to us and I approved it subject to two things: We want to reach the disarming of Hezbollah and we want a real peace agreement, a peace agreement that will last for generations.

And I want to tell you one more thing: It’s not only Lebanon turning to us. Many other countries, both in the Middle East and outside of it, are turning to us for cooperation, for alliances. They see our power; power attracts, just as weakness repels. Power attracts, and Israel today is stronger than ever. This small Israel, small perhaps in territory but giant in spirit and determination, and we have become the strongest regional power. Everyone understands this. And in some senses, a global power too. So they tell us ‘There are no achievements’, there are massive achievements here! This is a historic change. We crushed the nuclear program. We crushed the missiles. We crushed the regime. We have an unprecedented alliance with our great friend the President of the US, between the IDF and of course the US military, relationships that never existed before.

Now, these achievements are not yet finished. There is still enriched material in Iran. And as President Trump said, it needs to be removed. Either it will be removed by agreement, or it will come out in other ways. But we are working in cooperation between myself and President Trump, and between Israel and the US, that is unprecedented. These are achievements that change the entire balance of power. And Israel is a different Israel, stronger than ever.

There are those who dismiss these achievements, who diminish them, first and foremost Iran, and Iran’s propaganda echoes in our media channels. There is a mighty, huge change here, and it came thanks to our daring pilots, men and women, and our ground crews who work around the clock, and our heroic commanders and soldiers, and the fallen who fell for us, and those wounded in body and soul, for whose recovery we pray.

And it came thanks to you, citizens of Israel. You have stood firm all the time; I salute you. And it came thanks to the brave, determined, and informed decisions of the government under my leadership, and I want to tell you, we are still active. ‘Behold, a people that rises up as a lioness, and as a lion lifts himself up [Numbers 23:24]’; and with G-d’s help, we will continue to act together, and we will continue to win.”