Israel has already delayed Iran’s potential to build nuclear weapons “by at least two or three years” since launching “Operation Rising Lion” on June 13, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told Germany’s Die Welt daily on Friday.
Without going into detail about the IDF’s capacity to destroy all of Tehran’s nuclear facilities, including the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant located deep underground some 20 miles north of Qom in north-central Iran, Sa’ar vowed that Israel will “not stop until we have done everything that is possible to eliminate this threat.”
The foreign minister stressed that the goals of the war are to eliminate the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and ballistic missile threat.
Asked whether Jerusalem was seeking to overthrow the mullahs’ rule, Sa’ar replied that the “Security Cabinet has not yet defined any regime change as a goal of this war. At least not yet.”
He declined to answer when asked whether Israel planned to target Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei, saying, “We never speak in advance about what we are going to do.”
Sa’ar said that he does not “particularly believe in diplomacy with Iran. All diplomatic efforts have not been successful so far.”
As for the current negotiations in Geneva between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany and the European Union foreign policy chief, Sa’ar said that the Iranians “usually use these talks to deceive, buy time and make further progress [in their nuclear program]. And I don’t believe they will change their behavior.
“We need to do what we need to do to ensure that our country is safe—not threatened by extinction. No other country in the world would accept that a state that declares openly wanting to destroy us will receive the means to do so. That will not happen,” Israel’s top diplomat said.
“We have nothing against the Iranian people,” Sa’ar continued. “We had great relations with Iran until 1979 …, [when they] came with this idea of destroying us. Since then, they have been acting against Israel with terrorism, with its proxies of terror such as Hezbollah, Hamas or the Houthis, with direct attacks such as last year with hundreds of rockets and drones, and, of course, with an attempt to obtain a nuclear bomb.”
With regard to the prospect of the U.S. joining the war, Sa’ar said that Israel “will respect every American decision. It is up to America to decide how it pursues its national security interests, and we do the same as a sovereign state.”
The foreign minister added that he appreciated German Chancellor Friedrich Merz‘s comments on Tuesday that Israel was doing the “dirty work” of the West in its war with Iran.
“I think he has shown leadership with a genuine analysis of the situation and the dangers posed by Iran for the world and the international community,” Sa’ar said.
What Israel needs most from the Europeans is political support, he said. “We expect to receive the ammunition, the weapons we need to defend ourselves. And Germany does this,” Sa’ar stressed, adding that the country is one of Israel’s friends.