Last night, Netanyahu held his first in person press conference since the start of the war, followed by questions from the international press. He began by dismissing some current fake news: I’m alive, and you’re all witnesses.
He outlined Israel's 3 main goals: One, removing the nuclear threat. Second, removing the ballistic missile threat, and removing both of these threats before they’re buried deep underground and become immune from aerial attack. And third, this means creating the conditions for the Iranian people to grasp their freedom, to control their destiny.
He pointed out that Today, the Ayatollah regime is not only attacking America, is not only attacking Israel, not only attacking the Iranian people, it is attacking the entire Middle East and beyond. They’ve attacked civilians and Americans and American assets in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and they’ve even attacked, through their proxies, Cyprus and Europe.
He went on to say: We’ve warned for decades that their ballistic missile program would be used to attack these targets far and wide, and if they’re not stopped, that’s just the beginning. The death cult in Iran is trying to blackmail the world by closing a key international maritime route, the Straits of Hormuz. It won’t work. Israel is helping in its own way, in intel and other means, the American effort to open the Straits of Hormuz.
But I want to ask you to imagine how the Ayatollah regime would be able to blackmail the entire world if they had ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Just imagine what they would do. Look at what they’re doing now and imagine what they would do if they had ballistic missiles, international-range ballistic missiles, and nuclear-tipped warheads. Just imagine what a great threat that would be.
He went on to explain a way in which this operation is different from the previous one in June, Rising Sun: Their stockpiles of missiles are being hit hard, and so are the industries that produce them. That’s important. In Rising Lion, we destroyed missiles and we destroyed a lot of the nuclear infrastructure. But what we’re destroying now are the factories that produce the components to make these missiles and to make the nuclear weapons that they’re trying to produce. We’re wiping out their industrial base in a way that we didn’t do before.
And commented on what the war has achieved so far: Iran’s air defenses have been rendered useless. Their navy is lying at the bottom of the sea. Today, we hit the other part of their navy, in the Caspian Sea. Their air force is nearly destroyed. Iran’s command and control structure is in utter chaos. And I can tell you that there’s still more work to do, and we’re going to do it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-transcript-we-have-to-be-more-powerful-than-the-barbarians-or-they-will-crash-our-gates-destroy-our-societies/