“The entire West should come to its senses and join the fight against Iran, because Iran is an existential threat to the West as well,” Likud lawmaker Ariel Kallner told JNS on Monday.
The Islamic regime “threatens the stability of the region and the world,” said Kallner during an interview at the Knesset in Jerusalem. “We need to bring down this regime, even if it takes time and even if there are costs. ... A country with such a Nazi ideology should be brought down.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Tuesday it had targeted Bahrain, Jordan and three tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz in response to the latest U.S. strikes on regime targets.
According to U.S. Central Command, the naval blockade of Iran resumed on Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
According to Kallner, Iran should not be negotiated with at all.
“No country should legitimize its dealings with Iran, a nation that openly calls for the destruction of another country, Israel,” he said. “Legitimacy should not be given to its leaders, diplomats or any of its representatives.
“Their ideology is for the entire world to surrender to them and convert to Islam,” he told JNS. “They dream of it and publicly say so. Iran threatens world peace, and the world should stand up to it. It’s very simple.”
The 46-year-old Haifa native and father of five served in the IDF’s Golani Infantry Brigade and studied industrial engineering and management at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. He also holds an MBA and worked for 12 years in the high-tech sector as an information systems engineer.
During Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza, while still a student, Kallner was a leading activist in the movement known as the “Orange Cell,” which opposed the withdrawal from the Strip.
Kallner joined the Likud Party early on, and served as chairman of the Likud Youth Presidency in 2014. As part of his public activism outside the Knesset, he founded a nonprofit organization (Hazon Leumi—The Center for Zionist Leadership) to promote nationalist Zionist values in the public sphere, which remains active today.
Kallner first entered the Knesset in 2019, and was re-elected in 2020. Although he was not initially elected in the 2022 election, in which Likud won 32 seats, he entered the Knesset under the Norwegian Law and has served there since.
One of his primary goals, he told JNS, is restoring what he described as Zionist nationalist thinking to Israel’s state institutions, with an emphasis on the Land of Israel, the Galilee, Israeli sovereignty, and expanding Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
To this end, he is a member of the Jerusalem Caucus, the Caucus for the Land of Israel and serves as an alternate member of the Knesset’s National Security Committee, in addition to several other parliamentary committees.
Kallner said he continues to work on legislation aimed at removing barriers to land development in order to facilitate additional settlement.
In Judea and Samaria, Kallner said the government has brought about “a great revolution” in which Israeli sovereignty is being applied de facto. He said the settled areas won’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, which he described as seeking Israel’s destruction.
“They don’t want two nations for two peoples; they want us out of the picture,” he said.
Kallner also led efforts against what he described as foreign government intervention in Israel’s domestic affairs through nonprofit organizations. He said the European Union and the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden spent billions during the height of Israel’s judicial reform debate to influence the country’s internal affairs, arguing that the funding harmed Israel’s democracy, sovereignty and Jewish identity.
“Relations between countries are legitimate,” he said. “What is not legitimate is when countries interfere in another country’s democratic society by funding nonprofits under the guise of promoting human rights or peace, while using political organizations to strengthen one political camp without openly acknowledging it.”
“It is not legitimate, not democratic and not proper,” he added.
Returning to the topic of Iran, Kallner said Israel’s military campaign alongside the United States demonstrated that the two countries are partners in confronting the threat, while each continues to pursue its own national interests.
“We are not the 51st star on their flag, and they are not another Star of David on ours,” he said. U.S. President Donald Trump “has his interests, we have ours, and we see eye to eye on many issues.”
Kallner was the chief sponsor and author of legislation to make the temporary wartime “Al Jazeera Law” permanent, extending its application beyond a declared state of emergency and allowing the government to order the closure of foreign news organizations deemed harmful to Israel’s national security.
“The Al Jazeera Law states that a jihadist Islamist media outlet is an enemy of the state. The enemy is not just the one who holds the weapon; it’s also the outlet that incites or shares intelligence on how to hurt us. It’s those who educate to kill and those who broadcast terror,” he told JNS.
“They are part of the system that seeks to destroy our nation,” he added.
One of Kallner’s flagship legislative initiatives is the State National Commission of Inquiry for the Events of the Oct. 7 Massacre Bill, which has passed its first reading in the Knesset.
The bill proposes establishing a commission composed of coalition and opposition lawmakers, experts in relevant fields, and representatives of bereaved families serving as observers. Modeled in part on the U.S. commission established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the inquiry would operate publicly, with its hearings broadcast.
Kallner said the bill could not be introduced before the war in Gaza ended in Oct. 2025. Although he initiated it in December, he said a coalition crisis delayed the legislative process. The subsequent suspension of Knesset activity during the war with Iran, which began on Feb. 28 and lasted until Apr. 8, further prevented the bill from advancing before the pre-election recess. He added that the opposition’s rejection of the proposed model would, in any event, have triggered legal proceedings that would have prevented the legislation from being completed before the election.
“We are now going to the election with this law, with our quest for the truth, and if the public returns us to office, we will make it law,” he said.
Regarding the future of the Gaza Strip, which he expects to be a central campaign issue, Kallner said the current reality leaves few alternatives.
“It wasn’t Hamas that created Gaza; it was the Gazans who gave birth to Hamas. The population’s hate for Israel and for the Jews is absolute, and the only way to bring stability to the world is to allow them to go elsewhere. I don’t see any other possibility,” he told JNS.
“The situation in Lebanon is different. The population is diverse. There are Christians and Druze. But in Gaza, we saw it in almost every house: There is a Nazi Islamist extremist ideology that is impossible to accept,” he added.
