Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Full Statement to Foreign Press on Operation Roaring Lion

Welcome to the foreign press.

First of all, I just want to say

I'm alive

and you're all witnesses.

And now that I dispatch this piece of

fake news, I want to give you an oper an

update on Operation Roaring Lion. Under

President Trump's visionary leadership,

America and Israel are acting together

in Iran with great determination and

unprecedented strength. Operation Rising

Line is designed to remove the

existential threats posed by the

Ayatollah regime, the regime that has

waged war against America and Israel and

the people of Iran for 47 years. It

chants death to America, death to

Israel, and it delivers death to its own

people. Our goals are three. 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.

Today, the Ayatollah regime is not only

attacking America,

not only attacking Israel,

not only attacking the Iranian people,

it is attacking, 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 even attacked through their

proxies Cyprus in Europe. 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 Homos. It won't work. Israel

is helping in its own way and intel and

other means the American effort to open

the straits of tyran of hormuz rather.

But I want to ask you to imagine

how the 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.

So today, Israel and the United States

are protecting America, Israel, the

entire Middle East. But I uh I venture

to say the entire world.

Despite the fake news that is

unfortunately being spread uh since the

start of the war 20 days ago, we are

winning and Iran is being decimated.

Iran's missile and drone arsenal is

being massively degraded and will be

destroyed. Hundreds of their launchers

have been destroyed. Their stockpiles of

missiles are being hit hard and so are

the industries that produce them. That's

important. In rising line, we destroyed

missiles and we destroyed a lot of the

uh nuclear infrastructure.

But what we're destroying now are the uh

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 brace in a way that we didn't

do before.

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.

And I want to close these opening

remarks with one other fake news. And

that is that Israel somehow dragged the

US into a conflict with Iran.

Does anyone really think that someone

can tell President Trump what to do?

Come on. President Trump always makes

his decisions on what he thinks is good

for America. And may I add, I think what

is also good for future generations. In

this case, those interests are

absolutely clear and so is the clarity

of our achievements. Together in close

coordination with President Trump,

the close coordination between America

and Israel, our militaries, our

intelligence services, we're achieving

goals

in lightning speed. But I want to say

another word.

It's been said that for

40 years

I've been saying that Iran is a danger

to Israel and a danger to the world.

That is true. You know who else said

that?

President Trump. 47 years ago when the

Iranian

thugs took over the American embassy. He

said how dangerous this regime is. In

his first term in office, he didn't need

any convincing. He said the Iranian

nuclear deal was the worst deal that

he'd ever seen and he walked out of it

right before his second term before he

was reelected. I went to see him in Mara

Lago. The first thing he said to me was,

"Baby, we've got to make sure that Iran

doesn't have nuclear weapons." He said

that to me. I didn't say it to him. He

didn't need any convincing there either.

Now, why did he say that? Because for

more than four decades, this regime, as

I said in the beginning of my remarks,

is chanting death to Israel, death to

America. But they say Israel is only the

small Satan standing in their way. The

great Satan is the United States of

America. And these ideological fanatics,

these lunatics define their his own

detr. Their reason for being is wiping

out Western civilization and America

that leads it.

They have uh claimed the lives. They've

maimed and wounded thousands of

Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They killed the American Marines in

Beirut. They bombed your embassies. They

tried to assassinate the American

president, Donald Trump, not once, but

twice.

Now they blackmail for oil.

Just imagine what they would do, what

they're capable of doing if these

lunatics had nuclear weapons and the

means to deliver them to every American

city and every European city and

everywhere around the globe.

This is a danger for the entire world.

It's certainly a danger for Israel. It's

certainly a danger for America. We see

eye to eye on that.

President Trump and I, Israel and

America. But I think if people are

honest, if leaders are honest, they

would understand that we're not only

fighting their our fight, we're fighting

their fight. I speak to dozens of world

leaders.

Dozens.

They all know that.

And privately,

they all say that. They say that

privately, but I say it publicly. The

world owes a debt of deep indebtedness.

deep indebtedness to President Trump for

leading this effort to safeguard our

future.