JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israeli forces would remain in southern Lebanon for as long as necessary and vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“We will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon for as long as necessary to protect the cherished residents of the north and all the citizens of Israel… Nothing will alter that commitment,” Netanyahu said.
“And with regard to Iran: whatever political developments may unfold, I will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. As long as I serve as prime minister of Israel, that will not happen,” he added.
Speaking later at a public event, Netanyahu said Israel and the United States had achieved their objective of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“We prevented Iran from carrying out a plan to annihilate us and today they would have had an atomic bomb to do so,” he said.
“We prevented that from happening. We removed the existential danger. Had we not acted… Iran would have had atomic bombs and let me tell you something, they would have used them.”
“That’s what we prevented,” he added.
Netanyahu also said the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign had inflicted major losses on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and created conditions that could weaken the Iranian government.
“Because once you deal these blows and once the rift between the regime and people is so deep, you cannot tell when such a regime would fall,” he said.
“I think we created the condition for it to fall. That is what will be the real triumph when the Iranian people will take their own destiny in their hands and they knock out this brutal regime that is terrorising them and terrorising the rest of the world,” he added.
Netanyahu said Israeli forces continued to target Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon while seeking to minimize civilian casualties.
“There are some civilian casualties in every such war, in every such urban warfare,” he said.
He cited figures that he said came from Israel’s defense ministry research arm, claiming that Israeli operations in Lebanon had killed five Hezbollah fighters for every civilian harmed.
“Five terrorists killed for every civilian that is harmed in the process. Five to one. Unheard of,” Netanyahu said.
He reiterated that Israel was fighting Hezbollah and not Lebanon.
“When that proxy of Iran is no longer a threat, when it’s dismantled, when it’s disarmed, yes, we’ll have peace with Lebanon, and I look forward to signing it,” he said.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in early March after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel following the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in U.S.-Israeli strikes, according to Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli attacks since March 2 have killed 4,106 people, including 135 health and emergency workers, and wounded more than 12,100 others. Hezbollah said the casualties include its fighters.
