From the Liveblog of
Monday, June 16, 2025
Netanyahu: Iran’s nuclear program is like a cancer. You have to cut it out
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Answering questions at his Hebrew-language press conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he’s “not surprised” that Iran is now calling for talks to end Israel’s attacks, because, he says, “they want to go back to producing their [nuclear and ballistic missile] weapons of death.”
One way or another, Iran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programs will be destroyed, and they are welcome to do so themselves, he says.
But even as the Iranians were negotiating with the US, he notes, Iran’s “dictatorial” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “was tweeting that Israel will be destroyed.” Israel, he says bitterly, will not be fooled about Iran’s intentions.
What matters are “results,” says Netanyahu.
Netanyahu specifies that Israel insists on “three central results: the destruction of the nuclear program, the destruction of the production capacity of ballistic missiles, and the destruction of the axis of terror. And we will do what is necessary to achieve those goals. And we are coordinated with the United States.”
He says the regime could fall as a consequence of those results, noting that it is weak and that Israel is changing the face of the Middle East. “There could well be vast changes in Iran,” he says.
He says millions of Iranians have watched the clips he has issued speaking directly to them, and “today they are full of hope.”
He notes that nobody foresaw the fall of the Soviet Union, and only a few foresaw the fall of the Assad regime in Syria days before it fell. He “can’t predict the result” of Israel’s “historic operation,” but the fall of the regime “could certainly be the result of it.”
Asked how far Israel has set back the Iranian nuclear program at this stage, he answers by repeating that the goal is that “it must be destroyed” and describing it as “like a cancer. You know, when you have a cancer that threatens to kill you, you cut it out. You also do other treatments and it could be that it returns one day. But I estimate that we are setting them back a great deal of time… and we’re not stopping… We are truly carrying out root canal treatment.”
He adds the situation “is at 12 o’clock. There is no 13 o’clock,” and says Israel is doing “what a people that seeks to live has to do.”
The Times of Israel Community.