JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 21 said Israeli forces would remain in southern Lebanon “as long as necessary”, while also vowing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“We will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon for as long as necessary to protect the cherished residents of the north and all the citizens of Israel… Nothing will alter that commitment,” Netanyahu said.
“And with regard to Iran: whatever political developments may unfold, I will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. As long as I serve as prime minister of Israel, that will not happen.”
Later on June 21, Netanyahu, speaking at a public event, reiterated that the Middle East war had achieved Israel’s key goal of preventing Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon.
“We prevented Iran from carrying out a plan to annihilate us and today they would have had an atomic bomb to do so,” he said.
“We prevented that from happening. We removed the existential danger. Had we not acted… Iran would have had atomic bombs and let me tell you something, they would have used them.
“That’s what we prevented,” he said.
Netanyahu said the joint US-Israel campaign had dealt severe blows to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, from which it might “not recover for a long time”.
“Because once you deal these blows and once the rift between the regime and people is so deep, you cannot tell when such a regime would fall,” he said.
“I think we created the condition for it to fall. That is what will be the real triumph when the Iranian people will take their own destiny in their hands and they knock out this brutal regime that is terrorising them and terrorising the rest of the world.”
Netanyahu also said Israeli forces were targeting “Hezbollah terrorists” in Lebanon while working to keep civilian casualties low.
“There are some civilian casualties in every such war, in every such urban warfare,” he said.
“But I asked our people, our research arm in the defence ministry… what is the ratio in Lebanon?” he said.
“And they said to me…. it’s five to one. No, not five civilians killed for every terrorist. Five terrorists killed for every civilian that is harmed in the process. Five to one. Unheard of. Unheard of,” he said, reiterating that Israel was at war with Hezbollah, not Lebanon.
“When that proxy of Iran is no longer a threat, when it’s dismantled, when it’s disarmed, yes, we’ll have peace with Lebanon, and I look forward to signing it.”
Hezbollah had pulled Lebanon into the Middle East war in early March when the Iran-backed militant group fired rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes.
Lebanon’s health ministry says Israeli attacks since March 2 have left 4,106 people dead in Lebanon, including 135 health and emergency workers, and more than 12,100 people wounded.
Hezbollah says the toll includes its fighters. AFP
