JERUSALEM, Israel—When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers were discussing the plan to detonate explosives located inside pagers used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, some close to the Israeli leader encouraged him to give the Biden administration advance warning. Netanyahu refused.
“I said, ‘no,’ and we didn’t,” Netanyahu said, adding, “I didn’t read The New York Times that often, but why give them the advance?”
Netanyahu recounted multiple conversations, or lack of conversations, with the Biden and Trump administrations during a speech Sunday night at the Jewish News Syndicate International Summit in Jerusalem.
Less than two weeks after the beeper attack that killed nearly 40 people and left more than 3,000 wounded, Israel carried out a strike in Lebanon that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Again, ahead of the strike on Nasrallah, some close to Netanyahu encouraged him to share the plan with the Biden administration.
“No, no we’re not going to do that,” Netanyahu recalled saying at the time.
But there was still debate among Netanyahu’s cabinet about whether to carry out the strike on Nasrallah since Irian retaliation was likely. Ultimately, Netanyahu made the call to go through with the attack and oversaw the final details from afar while he was in New York to give a speech at the United Nations.
The strike was successful, and the terrorist leader was killed on Sept. 27, 2024.
The beeper attack and strike on Nasrallah came nearly one year after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people in Israel and taking another 251 hostages.
After the Oct. 7 attack, President Joe Biden went to Israel, which Netanyahu said he appreciated, but added that America discouraged Israel from launching a ground invasion into Gaza and instead encouraged an aerial attack. Israel launched a ground invasion anyway.
When Israel reached the outskirts of the city of Rafah in Gaza, Netanyahu said the Biden administration told him not to go in.
“I said to President Biden, ‘look, I respect you. You’re the president of the United States. Please respect me. I’m the prime minister of the one and only Jewish state. We are going in,’” Netanyahu recalled.
During the final 10-minutes of his nearly 50-minute speech, the Israel prime minister said he welcomes “President [Donald] Trump’s plan to allow the voluntary relocation” of Gaza’s citizens.
In February, Trump touted a plan to move citizens out of Gaza so the city could be rebuilt to become the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Netanyahu turned his comments to Iran, saying, “happily, we have a president in Washington who’s committed, as he says, and as he said to me many times, including just recently, ‘we can’t allow Iran to have nuclear weapons.’”
Netanyahu has met with Trump twice since Jan. 20.
The U.S. is currently in negotiations with Iran that are aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program.
Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, met with Iranian officials Saturday in the third round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations are slated to continue to a fourth round this week.
The only good deal the U.S. and Iran can reach will require Iran to “dismantle their nuclear structure,” Netanyahu said, adding this would mean that Iran would not have the capabilities to enrich uranium.
“The only reason you enrich uranium is to have nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. “There are dozens and dozens of countries who have civilian nuclear programs, and they don’t enrich uranium.”
Netanyahu also expressed his appreciation for the U.S. targeting of the Houthis in Yemen, adding, “we appreciate the help that we’re getting from the United State. Arms are flowing in [to Israel.] It’s important. We share the same goals, but we have to make sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons.”
