Iran-Israel war: Benjamin Netanyahu says Iran had enough enriched uranium for 9-10 nuclear bombs

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the attack on Iran was undertaken to prevent possible nuclear strikes on Israel, alleging that Iran had enough enriched uranium for 9 to 10 bombs.

“I decided that we should attack Iran. I saw the rise of the Islamic Republic. That is this theological thuggery that hijacked the ancient gifted people who are friends of ours from the times of the great Persian King Cyrus, 2,500 years ago. They were hijacked by these thugs and they have been oppressed for 46 years. They basically used Iran as a platform to export their revolutionary Islamist terrorist ideology to every part of the Middle East, attacking our Arab neighbours and seeking to attack America and “Death to Israel” is an intermediate step before they can deliver death to America because Israel prevents them from conquering the Middle East,” Netanyahu said in a press conference.

These comments come after the United States struck three of Iran's most fortified nuclear facilities on Sunday. The U.S. B-2 stealth bombers targeted Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan—critical centres for uranium enrichment—using "bunker buster" bombs designed to penetrate underground facilities.

“I could see that decades ago. That if they had the weapons of mass death, nuclear weapons. They could very well use them. I tried many ways to block this through the successive governments that I led. I wasn’t always able to muster the majority that I needed, the support of the security establishment. I also had to resist a plan by an American president to do an agreement that I thought paved Iran’s path to gold through nuclear enrichment. So, in every way I could, I tried to stop by taking out scientists during successive terms in office and other means that we used. We delayed them by about a decade but we didn’t stop them,” Netanyahu said.

“We saw that after I gave instructions to knock out Hassan Nasrallah, basically that knocked out the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Now we knew that Iran had lost other means that they were planning to annihilate Israel with. The Iran terror axis collapsed. And at that point we saw they were moving rapidly towards what is called weaponisation. They had enough enriched uranium for 9 and 10 bombs. But they needed to make the bomb itself, which they rushed to do right after the collapse of terror axis and the removal of Hassan Nasrallah. Therefore, we had to act. We were in the 12th hour. We knew that we wouldn’t have a 13th hour if they succeeded,” he explained.

The Israeli PM said Iran had a plan to build 300 ballistic missiles a month. “That’s 20,000 missiles in 6 years. You can imagine, our country, the size of New Jersey, would it survive 20,000 1-tonne rockets falling on the heads of its citizens, obviously not!” he said, adding that is what forced the decision to attack Iran.

Netanyahu said he shared everything with US President Donald Trump before the attack. “I told him of our need to act. He understood it very well. I knew that when push comes to shove. He would do the right thing for America. He would do the right thing for the free world. He would do the right thing for civilization. He helped us a lot in defending the skies of Israel with THAAD batteries...” he said.