‘We’re going after him’: Netanyahu describes decision to target Nasrallah

In an interview with the right-wing Channel 14, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also recounts the decision-making process leading up to the strike to eliminate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah two months ago.

Netanyahu pushes back against those who claim he opposed it.

Opponents of the move told the security cabinet that a full-blown war with Iran could erupt and that the US would have to be notified ahead of the strike, he says. He says he rejected that condition.

Netanyahu says he stopped the cabinet meeting at that stage: “I said that I wanted to think about the matter of the war, and I said that I would get back to them. Some people breathed a sigh of relief because they thought that by time I come back, Nasrallah would at least disappear and go to some other hiding place.”

During his flight to New York in September, ahead of his speech to the United Nations, Netanyahu says he decided to take out Nasrallah. “I got on the Wing of Zion, which has a secure communication system. I slept for two hours, then I picked up the phone to the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff and said: ‘I’ve decided. We’re going after him. We are taking all the risk, and it’s worth the risk.”

After landing in New York, Netanyahu convened the security cabinet by phone to approve the decision. “I said that the Americans can be informed, but more or less when the planes are already in the air.”

Netanyahu denies the theory that his trip to the UN was meant to trick Nasrallah into letting his guard down.