Benjamin Netanyahu says war on Iran is beyond halfway in missions, claims major damage to Irans military and nuclear capacity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the ongoing war against Iran has progressed “beyond the halfway point,” though he declined to specify when the conflict might end.
Speaking to Newsmax, Netanyahu clarified that his assessment referred to operational goals rather than time. “It’s definitely beyond the halfway point. But I don’t want to put a schedule on it,” he said, adding that the benchmark was based on “missions, not necessarily in terms of time.”
The Israeli leader further said that the campaign has already achieved significant objectives, including the killing of thousands of members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and major damage to Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure. He added that efforts to weaken Iran’s arms production and nuclear capabilities were nearing completion.
“Just the whole industrial base — wiping out all, you know, just plants, entire plants, and the nuclear program itself,” he said.
Netanyahu also expressed confidence that Iran’s current system of governance could eventually collapse from internal pressure, even as he stressed that the immediate goal remains degrading the country’s military strength.
“I think this regime will collapse internally. But at the moment, right now, what we’re doing is just degrading their military capacity, degrading their missile capacity, degrading their nuclear capacity and also weakening them from the inside,” Netanyahu said.
These comments came as US President Donald Trump, who launched the military campaign alongside Israel on February 28, had earlier suggested the operation could last four to six weeks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the war would last “weeks” further instead of months, amid wide US public opposition to a conflict that has sent oil prices soaring.
Netanyahu and Trump have repeatedly alleged that Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon, a claim not supported by the UN nuclear watchdog and that comes despite Trump saying he “obliterated” key sites in attacks last year.
