Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday left no doubt in a statement regarding what his Jewish country might do should current tensions with Iran escalate further.
“Israel will do whatever it needs to defend itself,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
The comment came after separate meetings with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Israel on Wednesday, during which the ministers discussed actions Israel could pursue to retaliate for Iran’s unprecedented, direct attack on Israel over the weekend.
“They have all sorts of suggestions and advice. I appreciate that. But I want to be clear: Our decisions we will make ourselves,” the prime minister added.
During the meeting, Baerbock said escalation “would serve no one, not Israel’s security, not the many dozens of hostages still in the hands of Hamas, not the suffering population of Gaza, not the many people in Iran who are themselves suffering under the regime, and not the third countries in the region who simply want to live in peace,” Reuters reported.
Netanyahu’s comment also comes just hours after Iran’s president has vowed to completely destroy Israel, should it proceed with even the “tiniest invasion” of its country.
President Ebrahim Raisi vowed a “massive and harsh” response to potential Israeli retaliation, during a speech Wednesday at an annual army parade.
Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel on Saturday in response to an apparent strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals. Iran blames Israel for the attack, although Israel has not claimed any involvement.
Raisi said Saturday’s attack was a limited one but that “nothing would remain from the Zionist regime,” should it escalate the current situation, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Israel and Iran have waged a shadow war for decades, with the war coming to a head over the past few months as Iran supports Hamas, which carried out the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7.
The Jewish country then launched a massive ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, intending to secure their hostages from Hamas and to remove the terror group from governing the territory.
On Saturday, Israel, with help from the U.S., the U.K., neighboring Jordan and other nations, successfully intercepted nearly every missile and drone that Iran launched. Israel boasted of a 99% success rate, through the use of its Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems.
Israel has said it will respond, although it has not provided additional details on how or when.
Its allies have urged any retaliation to be strikes in areas that would not result in human casualties and thus, likely avoiding further escalation.
Saturday’s attack was the first direct Iranian military attack on Israel.
Hmmm
TRUTH: Iran is not a terrors State and why israel has, like South Africa before it, become an illegitimate, rogue, terrorist, Apartheid State:
Lets see now. Iran hasn’t attacked any of its neighbors for decades unlike israel which has attacked literally every single country in the Middle East repeatedly with the exception of Saudi Arabia…
Lets see now. Iran hasn’t been committing Apartheid, Genocide, and all manner of war crimes, and crimes against humanity for literally decades like israel has…
Lets see now. Iran doesn’t come within a country mile of the record number of violations of UN sanctions and resolutions, not to mention endless violations of international law that israel continues to perpetrate as I write this commentary. In fact, no country on the planet comes close to the number of violations of UN sanctions and resolutions or international law that israel has committed…
Lets see now. Iran hasn’t killed more than 200 members of the Press in the last 40 years, let alone just the last 7 months like israel has along with many more over last 50 years.
Lets see now. Iran hasn’t murdered hundreds of aid workers (in fact none that I am aware of) like israel has in just the last 7 months and many, many more in the last 30 years…
Lets see now. Iran is not by force of arms or any other means, illegally occupying and systematically stealing the lands belonging to another country like israel is doing in the Sovereign and independent State of Palestine and the Syrian Golan heights. As a matter of fact, Iran hasn’t stolen any land…
Hmmm
I almost forgot:
Lets see now. Iran does not target and murder hundreds of thousands of innocent like israel has done to the Palestinians in the Gaza prison camp. When all is said and done, no doubt history will record that the Jews killed more than half a Million Palestinians, mostly women and children all illegally trapped in the prison camp called Gaza. In fact, that number may be as high as one million or more given barely a million managed to survive the slaughter from over 90,000 israeli combat troops, coupled with massive artillery, tanks, and aerial bombardment around the clock for 6 months (1.5 Million in the tiny Southern tip of Gaza would be literally standing room only and thus readily observable)
The evil and magnitude of the crimes committed by israel against the innocent unarmed women, children and old men of Palestine in general and now Gaza in particular are almost unimaginable and they define the Palestinians as victims of a real-life 21st century holocaust. Hiding the Apartheid, and endless war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide perpetrated by israel against the Palestinian people goes a long way to explaining why the israeli war machine has been targeting and killing aid workers and members of the press on sight in Gaza, Palestine, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights for more than half a century.
Most people do not know that it was in fact Jewish terrorists slaughtering entire villages and towns of innocent Palestinians that literally defined the contemporary 2oth century term “terrorist” in the 1930’s and 1940’s in Palestine. By 1948 the number killed by the zionist terrorists totaled more than half a million, with hundreds of thousands more forced out of Palestine completely.
The bottom line: Israel is far and away the number one terrorist state in the world today. And by extension, israel is far and away the number one threat to world peace in 2024…
Do you realize that Israel has been around for over 2000 years and has occupied their lands for that long in 1946 I believe England decided that Palestine should exist and they decided to split Israel land and to give the part from the river east not west to Palestine Israel left that land to Palestine they left the infrastructure they had built to them but Palestine changed its government to Hamas who decided that they couldn’t share it he land with Israel and they have over and over tried to kill the state of Israel they still scream death to Israel and from the river to the sea basically they want to destroy Israel and any other country that they see as against their religion which means everyone else why do you think other countries don’t want the Palestinian people to be in their country every time they have let them in they try to takeover the government of the country they move into look at the ones that are in America now
It wouldn’t surprise me if the attack on irans embassy was from another country trying to start a war between Israel and Iran because if Israel had done it they are brave enough to claim it unlike the chicken shit terrorist in the other countries around them
I so support Netanyahu …… however I wish he’d just do the “big one” and eliminate the enemy!