Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Iran attempted to assassinate former United States President Donald Trump on two occasions during his presidential campaign last year.
Netanyahu on Sunday alleged that Iranian proxies carried out the assassination attempts and that Tehran views Trump as its “enemy number one”.
Asked if he had any intelligence indicating direct Iranian involvement, Netanyahu responded, “Through proxies, yes, through their intel, yes, they want to kill him.”
“They want to kill him. He's enemy number one,” he added.
Netanyahu said that Iran perceives Trump as a grave threat to its nuclear programme, particularly because of the former President’s hardline stance and the 2020 targeted killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.
“He’s a decisive leader. He never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak, giving them basically a pathway to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars,” the Israeli Prime Minister remarked.
Netanyahu continued, “He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up. He killed Qasem Soleimani. He made it very clear, including now, ‘You cannot have a nuclear weapon, which means you cannot enrich uranium.’ He's been very forceful, so for them, he's enemy number one.”
Also read: Trump vetoed Israeli plot to kill Iran's Supreme Leader: Report
Netanyahu further asserted that he too was a target of Iranian assassination plots. “They also tried to kill me,” he said, describing himself as Trump’s “junior partner” in confronting Tehran’s regional ambitions.
The Israeli leader's remarks come amid renewed hostilities between Israel and Iran. On Friday, Israeli forces carried out a wave of surprise overnight airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military installations, reportedly killing several key commanders and scientists involved in Tehran’s nuclear development programme.
Netanyahu defended the Israeli military’s actions, arguing that Iran posed a “dual existential threat” to the Jewish state.
“One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponise their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal to the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year,” said Netanyahu.
He insisted Israel had to act in self-defence, stating: “No country can withstand the missile and nuclear power Iran was trying to attain.”
The Prime Minister’s comments are likely to intensify tensions further between the two arch-rivals, whose open hostilities in recent days have led to hundreds of deaths, with Iran claiming that 244 people were killed in three days of Israeli strikes, and over 1,200 others injured.
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