Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed on Tuesday the need to adopt a new approach to the threat posed by the mullahs in Tehran.
“The monstrous massacre on Oct. 7 reshuffled the deck. It requires a very different operative concept that takes into account Iran’s efforts to strangle us in a chokehold on seven fronts,” said Netanyahu.
“Today more than ever, we are in the midst of an enormous campaign for our very existence. On one side is the fanatic Iranian regime which threatens to destroy us, as a step toward taking over the Middle East, from where it will be able to threaten the entire world. On the other side is the democratic and free Israel that is determined to defend its home,” he said.
“We have no intention of losing this confrontation. We will continue to rebuff the efforts to harm us by Iran and its proxies. We will continue to strike—with uncompromising force—those who rise up to destroy us. We will settle accounts with all those who are carrying out this terrorist assault, down to the last of them. We will bring down Hamas’s regime of evil. We will thwart every future threat to the State of Israel from Gaza. We will return home all of our hostages,” added the premier.
Netanyahu was speaking at a state ceremony on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem to commemorate the IDF soldiers who fell in battle during “Operation Protective Edge,” the 50-day war against Hamas in 2014.
Earlier on Tuesday, interim Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani said that Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis had shifted the balance of power in the Middle East “in favor of the resistance.”
The “axis of resistance” includes Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria.
Bagheri Kani told Newsweek that the Jewish state “should face serious resistance in the region by these resistance groups and also by the nations and peoples in the region.”
On Monday, Iran was front and center when U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer at the White House for a U.S.-Israel Strategic Consultative Group meeting.
The American and Israeli leaders “were joined by senior representatives from their respective foreign policy, defense and intelligence agencies” for a discussion about countering the Iranian threat, the White House said.
The group also addressed “developments with respect to Iran’s nuclear program and discussed mutual coordination on a series of measures to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon,” according to the U.S. readout of the meeting.
Last week, Foreign Minister Israel Katz called for action against the Islamic Republic in meetings with international leaders at the opening of the NATO summit in Washington.
“Our enemy is also your enemy. The Iranian missiles and UAVs that threaten us are being sent to Russia and threaten you too. Crippling sanctions must be imposed on Iran, and the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards must be declared a terrorist organization,” said Katz.
