Netanyahu says overthrowing Iran’s government is the only way to remove its nuclear threat and vows Israel will deliver a ‘final blow’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said overthrowing Iran’s government was the only way to permanently remove what he described as an existential nuclear threat, and vowed Israel would deliver a “final blow” if necessary.

Netanyahu made the remarks in a wide-ranging pre-election interview with The Jerusalem Post recorded Wednesday and published ahead of Israel’s October 27 election.

Netanyahu said Israel had prepared to act against Iran even without U.S. approval after concluding Tehran was approaching the ability to produce several nuclear weapons. “There is no green light. We have no choice. Our existence is not a subject for negotiation,” he recalled saying.

He compared Iran’s leadership to the Nazi regime and said: “The only way to stop these Nazis, or these neo-Nazis in Iran today, is to eliminate the regime, to overthrow the regime.”

“We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it now and bring the final blow,” Netanyahu said. “Either we destroy them or they destroy us.”

On Gaza, Netanyahu said U.S. efforts to find an international force capable of disarming Hamas had failed and predicted the task would therefore fall to Israel.

He said Palestinians in Gaza should be allowed to leave voluntarily and disclosed that he was working “a great deal” with third countries that might receive them. “The problem is the countries that would receive them,” he said, adding that there were some initial developments but declining to identify the governments involved.

Netanyahu also said Israel would retain security control over Gaza: “Control will always be ours. We are not going to leave this territory.”

On the West Bank, he said his government had nearly doubled the settler population despite opposition from former U.S. President Barack Obama to construction beyond the Green Line. Asked about Saudi Arabia’s public insistence that Palestinian statehood remain a condition for normalization, Netanyahu dismissed the position and suggested Arab leaders privately cared less about the issue than their public statements indicated.

Saudi Arabia has continued publicly to condition diplomatic relations with Israel on a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu also said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir would hold a senior position in any future government he forms and argued that an Israeli prime minister must remain a major international actor because the country sits “in the eye of the hurricane.”