Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he did not ask U.S. President Donald Trump for permission before Israel struck Iran, but only notified him of the plan.
“There are moments when you have to know how to tell even the president of the United States what we stand for,” Netanyahu said at a local government conference. “When I came to President Trump before Operation Rising Lion, I did not ask for permission. I simply informed him of our plan. To my delight, he also joined toward the end in a very important action,” he added, using the Israeli name for last year's 12-day Israel-Iran war.
Netanyahu said Israel’s operations against Iran had prevented an existential threat.“Had we not acted in Rising Lion and Roaring Lion, Iran would already have had atomic bombs to destroy us,” he said. “We pushed that away. We pushed away the immediate threat of thousands of ballistic missiles.”
Netanyahu also said Israel would maintain its security zone in southern Lebanon “as long as I am prime minister.”
He pointed to Israel’s decision to enter Rafah during the Gaza war as another example of resisting U.S. pressure. “I told two presidents — [Joe] Biden before Trump — when they told me, ‘Don’t enter Rafah,’ that I respect him very much, he even came here, but we have no choice,” Netanyahu said. “We will enter, and if necessary, we will fight with our fingernails.”
“I do not wait for enemies who declare that they want to destroy us,” he added. “I will not let that happen.”
Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump
(Photo: JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
Netanyahu’s remarks came after reports that Trump had harshly criticized and cursed him in private. A new book by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan says Trump shouted at Netanyahu in a phone call days before last year’s public announcement of the agreement to end the Gaza war.
“Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi,” Trump reportedly told Netanyahu on the call, which also included his son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House envoy Steve Witkoff, who are both Jewish. “All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you.”