Netanyahu doesn't rule out Khamenei assassination: 'It's going to end the conflict'
Israel is "doing what we need to do," Netanyahu said when asked if Israel would target Khamenei.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was not ruling out assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an interview with ABC News on Monday.
“We are doing what we need to do,” Netanyahu said when asked if he plans on targeting Khamenei.
When pressed on previous reports alleging that US President Donald Trump rejected Israel’s plan to target the leader of the Islamic Republic due to concerns that this would escalate the conflict, Netanyahu said, “It’s not going to escalate the conflict. It’s going to end the conflict.”
“A ‘forever war’ is what Iran wants. They’re bringing us to the brink of a nuclear war,” the prime minister said.
“In fact, what Israel is doing is preventing this by putting an end to this aggression, and we can only do so by standing up to the forces of evil,” he added.
“Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York,” he said, adding, “Look, I understand ‘America first.’ I don’t understand ‘America dead.’”
Netanyahu also decried recent reports that Iran was seeking to end the hostilities.
“I’m not surprised. I mean, they want to continue to have these fake talks in which they lie, cheat, and string the US along. And, you know, we have very solid intel on that,” he said.
He added that this was just an Iranian bid to continue building its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenal.
American isolationists against US intervention in Israel's war against Iran
Netanyahu was asked to respond to US isolationists, such as conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, who said that the US should “drop Israel” and “let it fight its own wars.”
Direct US involvement in a war with Iran “would be a middle finger in the faces of the millions of voters who cast their ballots in hopes of creating a government that would finally put the United States first,” Carlson said.
“We’re not just fighting our enemy. We’re fighting your enemy,” was Netanyahu’s response.
“For God’s sake – they chant, ‘Death to Israel, death to America.’ We’re simply in their way... This could reach America soon,” the prime minister continued, calling sentiments like Carlson’s toward the Israel-Iran war “utter blindness.”
When asked how long the war would take, Netanyahu responded that he expects fighting to go on as long as it’s necessary to remove Iran’s “evil threats.”
