No One Can Tell President Trump What to Do: Netanyahu Denies Influencing U.S. Entry Into Iran War, Cites Close Coordination
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected speculations and claims that Israel had pushed the United States into war with Iran, saying “does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?”, while portraying the U.S.-Israeli campaign as a tightly coordinated effort to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, weaken its military-industrial base and create conditions for internal political change in Tehran.
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| Image of Israeli PM Netanyahu; Via: SilencedSirs on X |
Netanyahu said Israel’s goals were “three”: “one, removing the nuclear threat; second, removing the ballistic missile threat,” and doing so before both capabilities were “buried deep underground and become immune from aerial attack”; and “third,” creating “the conditions for the Iranian people to grasp their freedom, to control their destiny.”
He widened the case for the war beyond Israel, saying Iran was “not only attacking America, not only attacking Israel, not only attacking the Iranian people,” but was “attacking the entire Middle East and beyond.” Netanyahu said Iran had attacked “civilians and Americans and American assets in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman,” and had “even attacked through their proxies Cyprus in Europe.” He also accused Tehran of trying to blackmail the world by closing “a key international maritime route, the Straits of Hormuz,” arguing that if Iran acquired nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, its coercive power over the global economy would grow dramatically.
In one of the most direct statements yet on battlefield claims, Netanyahu said that despite what he called “fake news” spread “since the start of the war 20 days ago,” “we are winning and Iran is being decimated.” He said Iran’s “missile and drone arsenal is being massively degraded and will be destroyed,” that “hundreds of their launchers have been destroyed,” and that Israel was now targeting not only missiles and nuclear infrastructure but also “the 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 base in a way that we didn’t do before,” he said.
Netanyahu claimed Iran’s “air defenses have been rendered useless,” that “their navy is lying at the bottom of the sea,” that “today, we hit the other part of their navy in the Caspian Sea,” and that “their air force is nearly destroyed.” He added that “Iran’s command and control structure is in utter chaos,” though he also said “there’s still more work to do, and we’re going to do it.”
On the central political question of whether Israel had drawn Washington into the war, Netanyahu was categorical. “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,” he said, before adding, “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.” Trump, he said, “always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America,” and in this case U.S. and Israeli interests were aligned. “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,” he said.
Netanyahu repeatedly argued that Trump needed no persuasion. Recalling past conversations, he said that in his first term Trump had viewed the Iran nuclear deal as “the worst deal that he’d ever seen,” and that before returning to office had told him, “Baby, we’ve got to make sure that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons.” Later, responding to a question about whether he had misled Washington, Netanyahu said: “Well, I misled no one and I didn’t have to convince President Trump about the need to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program, putting it underground and being able to launch nuclear tipped missiles at the United States. He understood that. He explained it to me. I didn’t explain it to him.”
Pressed on the war’s endpoint, Netanyahu declined to set a timetable but said Israel had “concrete goals” and would continue until they were met. “We want to decimate the ballistic missile program, which we’re doing, decimate the nuclear program, which we’re doing,” he said. “We have goals that have to be achieved and we’re not counting the days.” He warned that failing to act would have carried “a much greater danger” than acting, arguing that within months, or “no more than a year,” Iran could have moved reconstructed nuclear and missile programs underground and beyond effective aerial reach.
He also outlined a broader geopolitical vision for the aftermath of the war, saying that once objectives are reached, alternative energy routes should be developed to bypass the chokepoints of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab.
Netanyahu said oil and gas pipelines running west through the Arabian Peninsula to Israel’s Mediterranean ports could permanently reduce global vulnerability to maritime disruption. He said he saw that as “a real change that will follow this war.”
On one of the war’s most sensitive escalation points, Netanyahu said Israel had acted alone in striking the South Pars gas complex and had since paused further such attacks at Trump’s request. “Fact number one, Israel acted alone against the … gas compound. Fact number two, President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks and we’re holding out,” he said.
He stopped short of promising regime change in Tehran but said Israel was trying to create the conditions for it. Asked whether he saw signs of collapse, Netanyahu replied: “A lot of signs.” He said there were “cracks” at the top and in the field, “some defections,” and “fear and trepidation in the IRGC units that are manning the ballistic missiles.”
He described the regime as “sort of like a hollowed out rotten piece of wood that’s holding on the outside but there’s a lot of rot inside.” Even if it survived, he said, it would emerge “a lot weaker,” stripped of industries and capabilities built up over decades.
Netanyahu said it was “too early to say” whether the Iranian people would exploit the conditions Israel says it has created. Asked about exile opposition figure Reza Pahlavi, he said he would not specify who should lead a transition but described Pahlavi as “a force for good” who had been trying to unite people behind a “democratic transitional government or a moderate transitional government.”
He paired those strategic claims with an appeal to the Israeli public, acknowledging the hardship of repeated sheltering, disruption to work and education, and the burden on reservists, children and the elderly.
He said the government was spending “a great deal of money” to support families and businesses and to reopen schools and the marketplace where possible. He also expressed condolences to Israeli families who had suffered casualties and later extended sympathies to American families affected by the war, saying “the cost to bereaved families is enormous.”
Netanyahu framed the campaign as part of a wider civilizational struggle. He said Israel was “leading the free world in the fight against the forces of evil,” that cooperation with Trump was “great,” and that Israel was fighting “with the United States for a common goal to protect our future, to protect civilization against these barbarians.” He said many world leaders privately agreed with that assessment, even if not all said so publicly.
The remarks, delivered 20 days into the war, offered Netanyahu’s clearest public defense yet of both the strategic rationale for the campaign and the political argument that the United States entered it on its own terms, not Israel’s. They also underscored how the conflict is now being framed by Israeli leaders not simply as a war over Iran’s capabilities, but as a wider contest over maritime chokepoints, energy security, regime stability and the future balance of power in the Middle East.
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