Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday said the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran saved his country from what he described as the threat of “nuclear annihilation,” while warning that Israel’s fight against Tehran and its regional proxies was “not over”.
Speaking at a televised press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem — his first public address since Washington and Tehran announced a preliminary peace agreement in the early hours of Monday — Netanyahu defended the campaign as one of the most consequential military operations in Israel’s history.
עם הסכם, בלי הסכם – כל עוד אני ראש ממשלת ישראל, לאיראן לא יהיה נשק גרעיני >> pic.twitter.com/P0k9WU20AK
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) June 15, 2026
“We neutralised their nuclear scientists, decapitated the leaders of the terror regime, crushed the nuclear facilities, destroyed missiles, and destroyed the overwhelming majority of factories producing missiles,” he said.
“We saved the State of Israel from annihilation,” Netanyahu told reporters, listing what he portrayed as the operation’s key achievements.
Iran will not get the bomb with or without a deal
Netanyahu drew a firm red line on Iran’s nuclear future. Terming it a “life’s mission”, he said “With an agreement or without an agreement, Iran will not have nuclear weapons not today and not tomorrow.”
He also stressed that Israel retained full freedom of action regardless of the terms of any US-Iran deal. “I would not make that comparison. We do not know what the agreement was,” he said, when pressed about similarities with the 2015 Obama-era nuclear accord that Trump had previously withdrawn from.
Story continues below this ad
Troops to stay; fight goes on
Netanyahu confirmed that Israeli troops would remain deployed in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria “for as long as necessary”, adding that the campaign had created a “credible military threat” to underpin any future agreement with Iran.
He warned that Israel’s military objectives extended beyond Iran’s borders. The prime minister said the country would continue to act against what he called “Iran’s terror arms” across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the West Bank.
Regime change was never the goal
Pressed on why the Iranian government remained in power despite the scale of the military campaign, Netanyahu rejected the suggestion that the operation had fallen short. “It did not go wrong at all. I defined the goals and the cabinet defined the goals differently from what you said,” he said. “We said we wanted to remove an existential danger from over us: first, the nuclear danger and we did that.”
He acknowledged that predicting political change inside Iran was impossible, comparing it to predicting the fall of the Soviet Union.
Story continues below this ad
Opposition leaders reacted sharply to Netanyahu’s press conference, assailing his claims that the war’s main goals were achieved even though Tehran’s regime was not replaced. “It would have been better for him to say, ‘I erred, I set false goals that I wasn’t able to achieve,’” said Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot.
Netanyahu, who faces a corruption trial, is under mounting pressure at home over his handling of the war and his limited influence over Washington’s negotiations with Tehran.
