Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the press conference on Monday, 15 June 2026:
“Dear Citizens of Israel,
For decades, I have been fighting against Iran’s efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons. I can define it as my life’s mission. I have met this challenge to this day, and I will continue to meet it in the future. With an agreement, without an agreement – Iran will not have nuclear weapons. Not today, and not tomorrow. As long as I am Prime Minister of Israel – this will not happen.
I hear people asking: What have we achieved?
And my response to them is: “What have we achieved”?!
We have fended off an immediate threat of annihilation. Together with our American friends, we launched the largest offensive air operation in Israel’s history.
We neutralized nuclear scientists, decapitated the leaders of the terror regime, pulverized nuclear facilities, destroyed missiles and the vast majority of the factories that produce them, struck countless military industries and infrastructures, destroyed their navy, their air force, neutralized Basij commanders who massacred the Iranian people, and caused enormous damage. We estimate it in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and some even estimate it to be closer to a trillion dollars – enormous damage to the economy of Iran that took them decades to build.
But here is the most important thing: we saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Because, it is crucial to understand, Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon just before Operation Rising Lion; it was racing toward a nuclear weapon and racing to bury its missile and nuclear industry deep underground.
If we had not acted at the time we did, and with the overwhelming force with which we did – both in Operation Rising Lion and later in Operation Roaring Lion, in historic cooperation with President Trump and the American military – if we had not acted in this way, Iran would already have atomic bombs.
And what does that mean? It means that millions of Israeli citizens, you who are listening to me now, you would all have been in terrible danger of mass death. All of us would have been in that danger. And this danger, of the elimination of Israel’s population, we have fended off for years to come. That is what we have achieved – we saved the State of Israel from annihilation.
But I tell you, citizens of Israel, the struggle is not over and done. We will need to maintain our vigilance, remain strong and determined to defend ourselves as required. This is true not only vis-à-vis Iran. This is also true vis-à-vis Iran’s terror proxies, which we have hit in an unprecedented manner. We did it in Gaza, we did it in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, we did it in the refugee camps in Judea and Samaria – we did it everywhere.
We eliminated Deif, Haniyeh, and Sinwar, along with many of Hamas’s leaders. Actually, almost everyone who was there during the horrific massacre; I think there is one more left, he too will be eliminated. We destroyed thousands of terrorists and countless terror infrastructures. We returned all our hostages from Gaza, down to the very last one. No one believed we would do that. I did.
I was told: Prime Minister, we must give up, don’t enter Rafah, end the war – we will bring the hostages and we will frame our exit from Gaza as a victory. I did not accept this nonsense. We entered Rafah, we entered Gaza City, contrary to the opinions of many – and we returned all the hostages, to the last one. And not only that, we exploded the pagers, we eliminated the arch-enemy Nasrallah, we prevented the invasion of the Radwan Force into the Galilee, we destroyed the vast majority of the 150,000 rockets and missiles that Nasrallah built in order to devastate the cities of Israel.
You remember what we were told: If we go to battle with Hezbollah, we will have tens of thousands of casualties, the towers will come down in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, in Be’er- Sheva; Israeli cities will be reduced to ruins. You remember that.
I did not accept that, we fought them, and we fought them hard; we also captured their key positions like the Beaufort, which Hezbollah had used for years to threaten the northern communities, and in fact the entire country.
Simultaneously, we did another thing: we established deep security zones around the State of Israel. We did it in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria – where, by the way, we destroyed all the weaponry of the Assad army, which was a central link in the Axis of Evil. And I wish to clarify: we will remain in the security zones for as long as it is required to defend our country.
Because after October 7th, I established a simple principle: Israel will not allow terror organizations to encamp on our borders; to tunnel into our territory; to prepare for a massacre close to our citizens. Today, the heroic IDF fighters stand as barrier between the terrorists and our citizens.
What we did, in fact, was change our entire security doctrine; change ourselves as well. We broke the barrier of fear. We take initiative, we attack, we surprise, and we strike at those who threaten our lives.
Israel is stronger than ever, and Iran’s Axis of Evil is weaker than ever. If someone had told you at the beginning of the war that we would achieve everything I have detailed, and I haven’t detailed everything – you would have said they were hallucinating. Just talk, just promises – no, we did all that. And today, after we have achieved all this, there are those who want to minimize it, to dismiss our tremendous achievements. And I tell you: we are going to achieve many more great things.
We will continue to neutralize threats in the region, we will build new alliances with countries in the region and beyond. We will ensure our own domestic armament independence, this is another principle I established, and I am investing 350 billion NIS in that, as a supplement to the defense budget. We will develop technologies that break the boundaries of imagination, and we will turn Israel into an even stronger power. Because our strength is the key to our future, it is the key to our security, it is the key to our economy, it is the key to our alliances. Because alliances are made with the strong, and Israel today is a very strong country. It is strong thanks to you, citizens of Israel.
I wish to thank you, citizens of Israel, for your steadfastness, for the support you give to the government and for the support you give me as the Prime Minister. And above all, I wish to thank our heroic fighters, men and women in active duty and in the reserves, at sea, on land, and in the air, in the IDF and in all the security branches. There is no one like you, heroes of Israel. Together we will continue to stand, and together we will continue to win.
“Fear not, O Jacob My servant, and be not dismayed, O Israel!” [Jeremiah 46:27]
Together, with God’s help, we will ensure the eternity of Israel.”