Israel ‘changing the face of the Middle East’ with Iran strikes: Netanyahu

‘Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns in a direct appeal to the White House.

In a video released on social media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives an update on military action against Iran. Picture: Israeli Government Press Office

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Benjamin Netanyahu has raised the stakes in Israel’s war with Iran, insisting his military campaign is a service to mankind that is “changing the face of the Middle East”, and that assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would end the conflict.

The Israeli Prime Minister has also issued a blunt appeal to the White House to help him dismantle Iran’s extensive military machine, telling America’s ABC News that Tehran would soon have ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US if it were not stopped.

“Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York. I understand America First. I don’t understand America dead. That’s what these people want,” he said. “We are doing something that is in the service of mankind, of humanity. It’s a battle of good against evil.”

Mr Netanyahu earlier said he was pursuing a three-pronged ­objective that went beyond simply disrupting Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, as he had previously claimed.

Instead, he said, the objectives were “the elimination of the ­nuclear program, the elimination of ballistic missile production capability, and the elimination of the axis of terrorism”, referring to Iran’s regional proxies of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen and pro-Iranian Shia groups in Iraq and Syria. “We will do what is necessary to achieve these goals, and we are well co-ordinated with the United States,” he said.

“We are changing the face of the Middle East and that can lead to radical changes inside Iran itself.”

Mr Netanyahu has made it clear he aims to set the conditions for Iranians themselves to overthrow the Islamic theocracy. But he also refused to rule out killing Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader, saying: “It’s not going to escalate the conflict; it’s going to end the conflict.”

US President Donald Trump is said to have vetoed Mr Netanyahu’s plans to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader and has so far resisted ­Israeli requests to join the attacks, though the US military continues to assist in taking down Iranian missiles and drones.

But Washington has moved considerable military muscle into the region in the past 36 hours, rerouting the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier from the South China Sea to the Middle East on Monday, along with its nine air squadrons and five destroyers.

It joins the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group, which has been in the Arabian Sea for several months and previously partnered with the USS Harry S Truman strike group to hit Houthi targets in Yemen.

The redeployment of the Nimitz, which is expected to reach the Middle East later this week, would give the US the minimum force ­deployment its military protocol requires during times of conflict in the region. But it pulls a carrier away from the Pacific just as the ­administration says it wants to strengthen efforts to deter China.

Dozens of US refuelling planes are also being transferred to ­Europe amid fears of the conflict escalating into a full-blown war that could see the US intervene to finally destroy Iran’s nuclear ­capacity and Iran retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s main shipping route for oil, and deploy regional proxy forces against US and Israeli targets.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted on Tuesday that US forces were in a “defensive” posture in the Middle East and that the President’s priority was achieving a nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Still, Mr Trump has been keeping everyone guessing, withdrawing early from the G7 summit in Canada and posting comments that have sparked speculation he may be readying to join the conflict.

“Iran should have signed the deal. I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A ­NUCLEAR WEAPON. Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran,” he wrote on social media.

US President Donald Trump boarding Air Force One after leaving the G7 summit early to return to Washington. Picture: Getty Images

Iranians have been streaming out of the capital since Israel’s first wave of pre-dawn attacks on Friday. On social media, some have even celebrated Israel’s assassination of military commanders who many blame for the 2022 crackdown on protests against the country’s strict religious constraints.

The Trump administration has been trying to negotiate a ­nuclear agreement with Iran since January, after Mr Trump scrapped the Obama administration’s 2015 deal during his first term.

But with Mr Netanyahu indicating far broader ambitions beyond disarming Tehran, many fear Israel is digging in on a gamble that the US will eventually provide the firepower it needs.

Mr Netanyahu told ABC News that Israel would “do what we need to do” to prevent a “forever war”, ­including killing Ayatollah Khamenei. “We’ve had half a century of conflict spread by this regime that terrorises everyone in the Middle East; has bombed the Aramco oilfields in Saudi Arabia; is spreading terrorism and subversion and sabotage everywhere,” he said.

Israel’s military campaign had demonstrated to Iranians that the widely loathed regime was far weaker than they had believed. “They realise it, and that could lead to results,” he said. “We have eliminated Iran’s security leadership, including three chiefs of staff, the commander of their air force, two intelligence chiefs. We are eliminating them, one after the other.”

Israel has also assassinated at least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists and caused significant damage to nuclear facilities at Natanz and ­Isfahan. But it has so far failed to cause any obvious damage to the heavily fortified Fordow fuel ­enrichment plant, which is critical to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

To do that, it needs US Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), or “bunker-buster”, bombs, the only conventional weapons with any hope of penetrating the facility 500m inside a mountain. The bombs can only be carried by large bombers such as America’s B2s. ­Israel has neither the bombs nor the bombers.

“The Israelis are never going to accept Iran having nuclear weapons so they have to take out Fordow but they don’t have the means, therefore they’re relying on the Americans to do that for them,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior defence analysts Malcolm Davis told The Australian.

“If they don’t take out Fordow then this will have all been for nothing because Iran can relatively quickly reconstitute its nuclear industry. So it is now a question of whether Trump wants to do that or not because, obviously, there are consequences. Iran could start ­attack forces across the region.”

The US President campaigned on a promise to extricate America from foreign conflicts and does not want to go down as yet another American leader who led his country into a “forever war” in the Middle East. “He is hoping for one more go at diplomacy, but if that doesn’t work I don’t see that the US has any other option but to intervene,” Dr Davis said.

With civilian casualties on both sides climbing and questions over Tehran’s capacity to maintain the tempo of its retaliatory bombardments, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has indicated Tehran is open to resuming talks with the US about curtailing its nuclear development program, after cancelling scheduled talks on Sunday.

“If President Trump is genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential,” Mr Araghchi said.

Yet at the same time Iran’s parliament is also preparing a bill to withdraw the country from the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement which obliges it to give up nuclear weapons and submit to international inspections.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted on Monday Iran did not intend to develop nuclear weapons, pointing to the Ayatollah’s longstanding fatwa (religious edict) against weapons of mass destruction, but that the country had the right to pursue ­nuclear energy and research.

But Mr Netanyahu dismissed suggestions Iran was ready to come back to the negotiating table.

“They want to continue to create the two existential threats against Israel while they’re talking,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”