Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likened the threat of Iran to "two lumps of cancer," telling Newsmax on Thursday that both can kill you and both have to be removed in order to survive.
And by bombing Iran's nuclear production capabilities, setting it back years, Israel removed the second lump of cancer, Bibi said.
In an exclusive interview with "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" at Blair House in Washington, Netanyahu said Iran is a "death cult" that had set out to eliminate Israel before going after the United States.
The first threat that Iran posed, Netanyahu said, was the "noose of death" — Iran's proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
"Hamas is the proxy. Hamas is the cat's paw. OK, you cut away the cat's paw, but there's still a cat, and the cat could — or tiger — could devour you," Netanyahu said. "Iran wants to destroy the United States. It's a cult, a death cult. And it says death to America. Israel is merely in their way, OK? ... The only party, the only country that is fighting Iran in the Middle East is Israel, up to recently. The only country. So we have to eliminate Israel. And in order to do that, you know, they said we either do it through this noose of death or with atomic bombs."
"So we could die this way or die that way. It's like having two lumps of cancer that are going to kill you. So we had to excise them in time. Does that mean that the cancer can't come back? Of course it can. And you have to make sure it doesn't. But if you don't act, you'll be dead. That's why we acted," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu says he's warned for decades that Iran would not be like other countries with nuclear powers.
"Because they will be unlike other nuclear powers — they'll use it. And if they have the weapon to destroy Israel, they will. And if they have missiles to carry that weapon [to Washington], they will. Could they conceivably bomb American cities? The answer is yes. That's not likely to happen with other nuclear powers in the world. But that is not true of these fanatics, OK?" Bibi said.
As for the operation itself, Netanyahu said Israel had talked of it for years but that he gave the order to begin preparations six months ago.
"We had to organize ourselves, you know, in a very sophisticated intel operation, cyber operation, air operation, and many other things that are combined in perhaps the most impressive use of wit and guts that we've seen in a long time," he said.
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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