Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has never had a friend or supporter to Israel in the White House like President Donald Trump, telling Newsmax on Thursday that the cooperation has been “tremendous.”
Netanyahu joined “The Record With Greta Van Susteren” at Blair House in Washington, weeks after Israel and the United States coordinated on efforts to bomb Iran’s nuclear production sites.
“It’s extraordinary. We’ve never had such a friend, such a supporter of Israel, a Jewish state, in the White House,” Netanyahu said. “President Trump has been — what can I tell you — tremendous. I mean, and the cooperation is tremendous. Look at what our cooperation produces. Look at what happens when there’s no daylight between an American president and an Israeli prime minister.”
Netanyahu said that the bombings set back Iran’s nuclear program “years.”
“We rolled back the greatest threat … to both our countries. Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. We stopped it in the nick of time,” Netanyahu said. “Those nuclear weapons were to be equipped on ballistic missiles that certainly wreak havoc in Israel now without nuclear weapons, but they’re aimed to be intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach this city, this house, and New York, and Philadelphia, and Miami, and Mar-a-Lago.
“They actually put a price on President Trump’s head and mine. You see this? This is what happened in the last two days, and issued a religious fatwa, a decree that says we have to be assassinated. These are enemies of the United States,” he added. “They want to develop the means of mass death, atomic bombs, and the means to deliver them to every theater near you. That’s what they’re trying to do. And we stopped them.”
Netanyahu said he’s known for 40 years that bombing Iran would be necessary, long before he became prime minister. He was asked if he ever tried to enlist the support of previous U.S. presidents to jointly take on Iran militarily.
“I tried. I failed. I couldn’t get them to do it,” he said.
But he and Trump share a “common doctrine,” he said.
“It’s important to understand that what we’re doing is achieving a common doctrine that President Trump and I both hold to. It’s called peace through strength. First comes strength, then comes peace,” he said.
