‘We killed their leaders’: Netanyahu says Israel has achieved more than half of its war goals in Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimated on Monday that he had fulfilled more than half of his war objectives against Iran, without however putting forward a precise timetable, during an interview with the conservative American channel Newsmax.

“We are clearly halfway there. But I do not want to set a timetable,” replied the political leader, on the 31st day of the war against Iran, specifying that he was speaking “in terms of missions, and not necessarily in terms of duration”. “I think we accomplished a lot. We have weakened this regime. We really dealt them a very big blow,” he said.

“We killed thousands of members” of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, and “killed their leaders,” continued the Prime Minister. “We are on the verge of completing their arms industry. Their entire industrial base, destroying everything, entire factories, and the nuclear program itself,” he further enumerated.

The head of American diplomacy Marco Rubio estimated earlier in the day that the war, triggered by an Israeli-American offensive on February 28, would still last “weeks” rather than “months”, saying he was optimistic about the possibility of being able to work with elements within the Iranian government.

Donald Trump also positive

Donald Trump had initially estimated the duration of military operations between four and six weeks. “Ultimately, I think that this regime will collapse from within,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, repeating that this was not the objective of the war launched by Israel and the United States.

“But right now, right now, what we’re doing is just impairing their military capabilities, their ballistic capabilities, their nuclear capability, and also weakening them from within,” he added.

Donald Trump had boasted the day before that he had already achieved “regime change” in Iran thanks to the strikes that killed Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei and many senior officials of the Islamic Republic. “We are dealing with different people than anyone has dealt with before,” he argued. “It’s a whole different group of people, so I would consider it a regime change.” »