Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened up about his occasional differences with U.S President Donald Trump, acknowledging that there were times when the two leaders could not see “eye to eye”.
There has been growing speculations about a rift between the two after Trump publicly called out Netanyahu for Israel’s ongoing military aggressions against Lebanon amid the United States trying to negotiate a peace agreement with Iran.
“Many times we see eye to eye, and there are also cases in which we see less eye to eye. I am responsible for Israel’s security interests. I stand up for them,” said Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel news outlet.
He also justified the joint U.S-Israel military operation against Iran on February 28, which triggered the current war that had been ongoing for over 100 days, claiming they saved Israelis from the threat of “nuclear annihilation”.
“The most important thing is that we saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear annihilation,” he said, adding “And what would that mean? It would mean that millions of Israeli citizens — you who are hearing me now — all of you would have been in terrible danger of mass death.. And we have pushed away from us, for years, this danger of the annihilation of Israel’s population.”
“I made no mistake at all,” he maintained his stance “We said we wanted to remove an existential threat hanging over us: first, the nuclear threat — and we did that, second the missile threat — and we did that.”
Netanyahu insisted that Iran would never have nuclear weapons irrespective of whether an agreement has been made or not.
“With an agreement or without one, Iran will not have nuclear weapons,” he said.
This was Netanyahu’s first public statement since Trump announced a peace deal between Washington and Tehran to end the war in West Asia.