JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that a series of blows by Israel against arch-foe Iran and its allies had triggered a “chain reaction“ poised to transform the entire Middle East.
“The historic events that we witness today are a chain reaction,“ Netanyahu declared in a video address directed at the Iranian people.
He counted “the pounding of Hamas” in the Gaza Strip, “the decimation of Hezbollah” in Lebanon and the killing of its chief Hassan Nasrallah, and “the blows we delivered to the Iran regime’s axis of terror” as some of the triggers.
Netanyahu said Iran had spent tens of billions of dollars to prop up the now-toppled regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, as well as armed groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
“The only thing Israel seeks is to defend our state, but in so doing, we're defending civilisation against barbarism,“ he said.
Netanyahu said he believed the people of Iran desired peace, “but you suffer under the rule of a regime that subjugates you and threatens us.”
“One day this will change. One day Iran will be free,“ the Israeli leader said, adding that “we will realise that future together a lot sooner than people think.”
Iran has been a long-standing ally of the Assad family, whose decades-long rule in Syria ended over the weekend when a whirlwind rebel offensive took the capital Damascus.
Assad had long played a strategic role in Iran's anti-Israel “axis of resistance”, particularly in facilitating the supply of weapons to Tehran’s ally Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
Earlier on Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps strongly condemned “the abuse of the current instability in Syria by the US and the Zionist regime,“ referring to Israel.
Since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, the violence has drawn in Iran-aligned militants in the region.
During the war, Iran has also carried out two direct attacks against Israel using hundreds of missiles.
