Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Thursday that Israel and the United States “undermined the foundations” of the Iranian regime over more than six weeks of war, as he touted Jerusalem’s accomplishments and insisted that, despite naysayers, it was more in sync with Washington than ever, following US President Donald Trump’s two-week ceasefire announcement.

The prime minister asserted that Israel had achieved significant goals in Iran and was walking away “stronger than ever.” He acknowledged, however, that there was still more to be done, saying Israel would be ready to return to fighting at a moment’s notice.

Netanyahu also sought to shoot down the notion that he had been caught off-guard by the ceasefire, which was the result of eleventh-hour efforts by Pakistan to avert US President Donald Trump’s threat of massive destruction across Iran from coming to fruition, as opposition leaders charged that the truce marked a strategic disaster — with Opposition Leader Yair accusing the premier of using Israelis as “cannon fodder” and lying to the US.

The “temporary two-week ceasefire” between the US and Iran was done “in full coordination with Israel,” insisted the premier, who delivered his remarks in a televised address without any time allocated for questions from the media. “No, they did not surprise us at the last minute.”

The ceasefire did not signal the end of Israel’s feverish efforts against the Islamic Republic, Netanyahu said, but was merely “a milestone on the path” to achieving all of Israel’s goals.

Iran is entering negotiations with the US when it is weaker than ever, he said, claiming — despite Iranian reports to the contrary — that Tehran had opened the Strait of Hormuz and given up all its previous demands, including the lifting of sanctions, reparations, the permanent end of the war and a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Iran’s Fars news agency reported earlier Wednesday that the country again halted the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz over Israel’s strikes in Lebanon. Tehran has insisted that Israel is expected to cease its offensive against Hezbollah as part of the ceasefire agreement, but Israel has disputed this, continuing to attack the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group throughout Wednesday.

Much of Netanyahu’s address was dedicated to the strength of his friendship with Trump, which he said was “changing the face of the Middle East,” and to accomplishments achieved under their leadership.

“Such a partnership between Israel and the United States against our greatest enemy has also never existed in the history of Israel,” Netanyahu boasted, saying they speak every day and laugh together at reports of tension in the relationship.

The two went to war together “to remove an existential threat to the State of Israel and to the entire free world,” said Netanyahu. “That mission, we are carrying out. We are carrying it out step by step, target by target.”

If Israel had not initiated two campaigns against Iran in the past year, Iran “would have achieved a nuclear weapon long ago,” the premier asserted.

Instead, he said, Israel successfully pushed away the dual nuclear and ballistic missile threat and “undermined the foundations” of the regime

“At a time when Iran is weaker than ever, Israel is stronger than it has ever been,” Netanyahu declared.

“We have set the terror regime in Iran back many years. We have shaken its foundations. We have crushed it.”

‘They have nowhere to hide’

Listing the achievements in the war, the premier claimed Israel destroyed Iran’s “missile machine,” leaving it unable to build new ones even as their store of missiles dwindled with each attack launched at targets across the region.

Jerusalem also hit Iran’s nuclear program hard, he said, including its centrifuge production factories, and killed a number of its nuclear scientists.

He said that all of Iran’s enriched uranium would be taken out of the country, “either by agreement or through resumed fighting.” On this, he said, the US and Israel “see eye to eye.”

Israel has also “smashed” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ “financial machine and weapons production machine,” Netanyahu proclaimed. “We destroyed steel plants, petrochemical plants, weapons factories, bridges, and railway lines used for transporting forces and weapons. We destroyed military infrastructure — the Iranian navy, dozens of aircraft, missile bases, and headquarters.”

“We dealt a severe blow to the regime’s apparatus of repression, eliminated thousands of its operatives, and proved that we can hunt them anywhere,” he said, noting the assassination of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in the opening strikes of the war. “They have nowhere to hide.”

Despite these achievements, Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel still “has more goals to complete” in Iran.

“We will achieve them,” he promised, “either through agreement, or through renewed fighting.”

Israel, he said, “is ready to return to fighting at any time.”

“The finger is on the trigger.”

Restoring security to the north

Turning his attention to Lebanon, Netanyahu said he demanded that Israel not be made to stop the fighting against Hezbollah as part of a ceasefire with Iran.

“We continue to strike them with force,” he said of Hezbollah, which Israel launched a new offensive against after it fired rockets over the border on March 2 in a show of solidarity with Iran.

“Today we dealt Hezbollah the hardest blow it has suffered since the pagers,” the premier said. “We struck 100 targets in 10 minutes, in places Hezbollah was sure were immune.”

Israel is committed, he said, to restoring security to the north, where residents have been repeatedly battered by renewed Hezbollah drone and missile attacks for more than a month now.

The premier ended by warning that anyone who “tried to ignore” or “belittle” Israel’s accomplishments was either doing so out of ignorance or for “ulterior motives.”

“Because the truth is simple: As I promised you at the very start of the War of Revival, we have dramatically changed the face of the Middle East in Israel’s favor, and we will continue to do so,” Netanyahu vowed, using the government’s official name for the Gaza war and broader regional conflict sparked the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

‘One more such victory, and we are lost’

Across the political aisle, not all were content to let Netanyahu bask in his purported accomplishments, as party leaders and his political rivals accused him of failing to accomplish any of the goals he had set out to reach.

In a scathing critique of the prime minister, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called the war with Iran a “diplomatic disaster on a scale I do recall ever seeing.”

“Netanyahu led us into a strategic debacle. Nothing less,” seethed Lapid. “What we saw was a disgraceful combination of arrogance, irresponsibility, lack of planning, negligent staff work, zero handling of the home front, and lies sold to the Americans that damaged the trust between our two countries.”

“Of all the possible outcomes, Netanyahu delivered the worst one: the regime in Iran was not defeated, the nuclear threat was not removed, and the ballistic missiles and Hezbollah’s missiles remain aimed at every home in Israel,” he added, accusing the government of treating Israeli citizens as “cannon fodder” for its war.

“What happened is that Netanyahu went to war under ideal conditions, but with absolutely no idea how to end it. On the battlefield, we won; on the diplomatic front, it is a total defeat,” Lapid charged. “In the words of King Pyrrhus: “One more such victory, and we are lost.”

Netanyahu “has left Israel outside the negotiating room,” fumed Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party, arguing that the premier had failed to achieve “even “a single one” of Israel’s strategic goals and that the Iranian regime “is coming out of the war stronger strategically than it entered it, with the upper hand.”

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett likewise warned that Netanyahu was leaving Israel vulnerable to a “vengeful Iran,” which will be even more determined to go nuclear.

“The reason why so many people feel disappointed tonight is that the leadership sold us illusions,” he charged. “All their empty promises have exploded in our faces.”

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