PM confirms that a ‘specific component’ in Iran’s nuclear program was hit in last month’s strikes, in Knesset speech repeatedly interrupted by family members of hostages

By Lazar Berman Follow

18 November 2024, 9:10 pm

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the plenum of the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on November 18, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the plenum of the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on November 18, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Speaking nearly two weeks after the US election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly criticized the Biden administration’s judgment and policies at major junctions in Israel’s ongoing war against Iran and its proxies.

“The US had reservations and suggested that we not enter Gaza,” said Netanyahu in the Knesset plenum on Monday. “It had reservations about entering Gaza City, Khan Younis, and, most critically, strongly opposed entry into Rafah.”

Administration officials had publicly urged Israel to calibrate its Rafah offensive to minimize civilian harm.

“President Biden told me that if we go in, we will be alone,” Netanyahu said. “He also said that he would stop shipments of important weapons to us. And so he did. A few days later, [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken appeared and repeated the same things and I told him — we will fight with our nails.”

The US withheld a single shipment of 2,000-lb bombs, allowing all other weapon transfers to continue.

Netanyahu also criticized US positions after Iran’s drone and missile attacks on Israel: “Again, we were told by our friend that there is no need to respond. And I said that sitting and not reacting is not acceptable, and we responded.”

Armed Israeli Air Force planes depart from an unknown location to attack Iran, October 26, 2024. (Israeli Army via AP)

‘Specific component’ in Iran nuke program hit

The prime minister said that the Israeli response last month took out air defense batteries and “inflicted real damage on Iran’s ballistic missile production capability,” as well as targeting its nuclear program.

“It’s not a secret, it has been published,” Netanyahu said. “There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack.”

However, Netanyahu added that Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon has not been blocked. “We’ve delayed it… but it has progressed” over the past few years, he said. Iran has “advanced its enrichment; it still has a long way to go in other areas.” The imperative to stop Iran’s march to the bomb “is on us,” he said.

Israel’s April strike on Iran, Netanyahu said, took out one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran. In October, Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries and caused serious damage to Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce solid fuel, which is used in long-range ballistic missiles.

Last week, the Axios news site revealed that Israel destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin during last month’s attack on Iran.

Netanyahu also indicated that Israel would need to continue to operate militarily against the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.

“The most important thing is not [the deal that] will be laid on paper,” Netanyahu said. “Even if there is a paper [setting out an agreement], worthy though it may be, we will be required, in order to ensure our security in the north (of Israel), to systematically carry out operations — not only against Hezbollah’s attacks, which could come. Even if there is a ceasefire, nobody can guarantee it will hold. So it’s not only our reaction, a preventive reaction, a reaction in the wake of attack, but also the capacity to prevent Hezbollah from strengthening.”

“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6, 2023,” he stressed.

Hopes for progress on hostages

Netanyahu’s address was interrupted repeatedly by opposition lawmakers and by protesters in the gallery who laid out posters with the faces of hostages held in Gaza. Some were ejected by Knesset security.

Families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza protest during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the Knesset on November 18, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Netanyahu told the Knesset plenum that he had met with aides and members of security services until 3 a.m. a night earlier to discuss new ways to get hostages home.

“To date, we have brought back 154,” he said. “117 alive, and another 37, unfortunately, no longer alive.”

He argued that senior US officials agree that maximum pressure must be applied on Hamas so that it will back off its “unrealistic” demands for a deal.

One challenge of the war that we won’t give up on, he said, is “how to extract from those murderers, from Hamas, how to extract from those tunnels, the rest of our hostages… Victory includes freeing the hostages. And we will achieve it as well,” he said.

“We will bring home dozens more hostages, I hope in the near future.”

He said the focus now is on harming Hamas’s ability to rule Gaza — a claim he has made for months.

“I asked the IDF to come up with an orderly plan to eradicate the governmental capacity, which is related to the denial of their ability to distribute humanitarian aid,” he said. “We want to ensure that the humanitarian aid is not looted by Hamas and others.”

‘The public is not stupid’

As he has done repeatedly in recent weeks, Netanyahu blasted the “countless leaks from the cabinet and the negotiating team.”

“The leaks seriously harm the chance of obtaining a deal for the release of hostages, they delay the release of our hostages,” he said.

While Netanyahu did not refer to the ongoing investigation of the alleged theft of IDF intelligence documents and the suspected leak of one of the documents by his former aide Eli Feldstein — who has been in detention for three weeks — he implied that there is a discriminatory focus in what the law enforcement authorities choose to investigate.

“I have called time after time for the phenomenon [of leaks from the cabinet and negotiating team] to be investigated,” he said. “I asked, how can it be that leaks that cause immense damage to the State of Israel are not investigated? I was told: You need to send a letter. So I sent a letter, setting out a range of terrible, criminal leaks, that do tremendous harm to Israel.”

He continued, “And yet, as of this moment, nobody has been investigated and nobody has been arrested [for those leaks]. Nobody’s life has been ruined,” he says, another implied reference to the ongoing detention of Feldstein. “Everybody understands what’s going on here. Nobody is stupid. The public is not stupid… The people are not stupid.”

Responding to Netanyahu’s insistence that he has “left no stone unturned” in his effort to free Israeli hostages held in Gaza, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid told lawmakers in the Knesset that the prime minister “is not ready to take the smallest political risk to bring 101 hostages home.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid addresses the press ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, November 18, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

“Do the government ministers, the members of the cabinet, the prime minister, especially the prime minister, believe that they have no more sacred, greater duty than to return abductees home,” Lapid asked in his own address following Netanyahu’s speech.

“What if a reservist is kidnapped tomorrow? Mr. Prime Minister, will you do everything to get him back? Will he return home or will he end up like Hersh and Carmel and Eden and Yotam and Alon,” Lapid asked, naming Israeli hostages who were kidnapped and killed in captivity.

“The reservists can’t trust you. They look at this government, they look at you Mr. Netanyahu, and they know that there is no one to trust. They are fulfilling their duty, the government is not fulfilling its duty,” Lapid continued, linking the hostage issue to Netanyahu’s support for legislation to enshrine draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox while other Israelis fight and die on the battlefield.

“Actions speak louder than words,” he added. “If there’s no hostage deal, then you didn’t make it. If you fired the defense minister to pass an evasion law, then the evasion law is more important to you than security.”

Sam Sokol and agencies contributed to this report.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637132&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48358752)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637132&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48358842)

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