Netanyahu says he ordered IDF to prepare for ‘intensive war’ if Hezbollah breaks ceasefire

In his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that if Hezbollah doesn’t adhere to the rules, there will be “intensive war.”

“I gave the IDF instructions,” says Netanyahu, speaking to the right-wing Channel 14, “if there is a massive violation of the agreement, not only will we operate surgically like we are doing now, and with force, every time. I said, if there is a massive violation of the agreement, I instructed the IDF to prepare for an intensive war.”

Netanyahu was gathering advisors tonight for a meeting on the continuation of the war on its various fronts, Channel 13 reports.

To Channel 14’s Yaakov Bardugo, Netanyahu says the ceasefire in Lebanon “can be short,” and that Israel “enforced it on its first day.”

Asked why Israel is not creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, Netanyahu notes that the “threat of a ground invasion has been removed.”

He says that the IDF destroyed the aboveground infrastructure on the border, and the underground bunkers and tunnels.

Residents of the north “will return in stages, when they feel that what I’m saying is correct.”

On Iran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu will not promise that Iran won’t attain a nuclear weapon, instead saying “I will do everything so that Iran won’t be nuclear.”