Translated from Hebrew
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening at a press conference:
"Dear citizens of Israel,
For decades, I have been fighting Iran's efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons. I can define this as the mission of my life. I have stood firm in it until today, and I will continue to stand firm in the future. With an agreement, without an agreement—Iran will not have nuclear weapons. Not today, and not tomorrow. As long as I am Prime Minister of Israel—this will not happen.
I hear people asking: What have we achieved? And I answer them: 'What have we achieved'? We have pushed away from us the immediate threat of annihilation. Together with our American friends, we launched the largest attack sortie in Israel's history. We neutralized their nuclear scientists, decapitated the leaders of the terror regime, crushed their nuclear facilities, destroyed missiles and most of the factories that produce missiles, struck countless military industries and infrastructures, destroyed their navy, their air force, neutralized Basij commanders who massacred the Iranian people, inflicted enormous damage—we estimate it at hundreds of billions of dollars, and some estimate it even close to a trillion dollars—enormous damage to Iran's economy that took them decades to build.
But here's the most important thing—we saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Because it must be understood, Iran was racing toward the nuclear bomb right before 'With a Lion'—it was racing toward the bomb and racing to bury its missile and nuclear industry deep underground.
If we had not acted at the time we did, and with the intensity we did—both in 'With a Lion' and then in 'Roar of the Lion'—in historic cooperation with President Trump and the American military—if we had not acted in this way, Iran would already have atomic bombs by now. And what does that mean? It means that millions of Israeli citizens, you who are listening to me now, all of you would have been in terrible danger of mass death. We were all in that danger. And that danger, of the extermination of Israel's population, we have pushed away from us for years. That's what we achieved—we saved the State of Israel from destruction.
But I say to you, citizens of Israel, the struggle is not over and done with. We will need to continue to stay vigilant, continue to be strong and determined to defend ourselves as much as required. This is true not only against Iran. It is true also against Iran's terror arms, which we have struck in an unprecedented manner. We did it in Gaza, we did it in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, we did it in the refugee camps in Judea and Samaria—we did it everywhere.
We eliminated Deif, Haniyeh and Sinwar along with many of Hamas's leaders. In fact, almost all of them—everyone who was there in that horrific massacre, I think one is left, he will be eliminated too. We destroyed thousands of terrorists and countless terror infrastructures. We brought back all our hostages from Gaza, to the last one. No one believed we would do it. I believed.
They told me: Prime Minister, we must concede, don't enter Rafah, end the war. We'll bring back the hostages, we'll frame our exit from Gaza as a victory. I did not accept those nonsensical words. We entered Rafah, we entered the city of Gaza, against the opinion of many—and we brought back all the hostages, to the last one. And not only that, we blew up the pagers, eliminated the tyrant Nasrallah, prevented the Radwan Force's invasion of the Galilee, destroyed the overwhelming majority of the 150,000 rockets and missiles that Nasrallah built to devastate Israel's cities.
You remember what they told us—'If we enter into battle with Hezbollah, we'll have tens of thousands of dead, the towers will fall in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva. The cities of Israel will become a city of ruins.' You remember that. I did not accept it, we fought them, and how we fought them, we also captured key positions of theirs like Beaufort, from which Hezbollah threatened the northern settlements for years, in fact the entire country.
In parallel, we did something else: we established deep security zones around the State of Israel. We did it in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria—where, by the way, we eliminated all of Assad's weapons that were a central link in the axis of evil. And I want to make it clear: we will remain in the security zones as long as required to defend our country.
Because after October 7, I set a simple principle: Israel will not allow terror organizations to camp on our borders. To dig terror tunnels into our territory, to prepare for massacres near our civilians. Today, our heroic IDF fighters stand between the terrorists and our civilians. In fact, what we did, we changed our entire security doctrine. We changed ourselves too. We broke through the barrier of fear. We initiate, we attack, we surprise, and we strike hard at those who seek our souls.
Israel is stronger than ever, and Iran's axis of evil is weaker than ever. If someone had told you, at the beginning of the war, that we would achieve everything I detailed, and I didn't detail everything—you would say he is daydreaming. Well done, security experts, no. We did it.
And today, after achieving all this, there are those who want to downplay it, to dismiss our tremendous achievements. And I say to you—we are going to achieve many more great things. We will continue to thwart threats in the arena, we will build new alliances with countries in the region and outside the region. We will ensure our military independence, that's another principle I set and I am allocating an additional 350 billion shekels to the defense budget. We will develop technologies that break the boundaries of imagination, and we will turn Israel into an even stronger power. Because our strength is the key to our future, it is the key to our security, it is the key to our economy, it is the key to our alliances. Because alliances are made with the strong, and Israel today is a very strong country. It is strong thanks to you, citizens of Israel.
I want to thank you, citizens of Israel, for your steadfast stance, for the backing you give the government, for the backing you give me as Prime Minister. And above all, I want to thank our heroic fighters and female fighters in the regular and reserve forces, at sea, on land, and in the air. In the IDF and in all security branches. There is none like you, heroes of Israel.
Together we will continue to stand, and together we will continue to win.
'Fear not, My servant Jacob, and do not be dismayed, O Israel.'
Together, with the help of God, we will ensure the eternity of Israel."
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