Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made bold historical claims on Friday, saying he and US President Donald Trump had achieved an unprecedented level of coordination as allies and that Iran was on the verge of total defeat. He announced that Iran had lost its uranium enrichment and ballistic missile capabilities after twenty days of war and dismissed reports about Israel dragging the US into the conflict as false. Netanyahu’s press conference was confident, sweeping, and forward-looking.
The prime minister devoted significant attention to describing the Trump-Netanyahu partnership. He said he did not believe any two leaders had ever been as closely aligned as he and Trump, while making clear he viewed himself as the junior partner in the alliance. Netanyahu revealed that Trump had personally shaped his understanding of Iran’s nuclear threat, suggesting the two men shared a profound strategic alignment on the dangers posed by Tehran.
Israel’s unilateral strike on the South Pars gas compound was confirmed at the briefing. Netanyahu also revealed that Trump had personally requested Israel hold off on further attacks against Iran’s natural gas infrastructure. He treated this as a respectful exchange between partners and maintained that Israel had exercised and would continue to exercise full autonomy in its military decisions.
Netanyahu was dismissive of Iran’s Hormuz threats, calling them blackmail that would not succeed. He proposed an infrastructure alternative: overland pipelines running from the Arabian Peninsula to Israeli and Mediterranean ports that would make the Strait of Hormuz strategically irrelevant. Netanyahu linked this proposal to a broader vision of regional transformation that he hoped to pursue after the war’s conclusion.
Iran’s internal leadership structure was described by Netanyahu as increasingly chaotic. He noted that the anticipated new supreme leader had not been seen publicly and questioned openly who was making decisions in Tehran. Netanyahu said the combination of military pressure from outside and leadership confusion from within made him genuinely confident that the war would end sooner than most people anticipated.