Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to wean Israel off United States military support within a decade as his country pushes to strengthen ties with Gulf states, in an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” Netanyahu told CBS. He pegged the current annual figure at about $3.8 billion under a 2018-to-2028 framework totalling $38 billion. He said it was “absolutely” the right time to reset the financial relationship and added that he did not want to wait for the next Congress. “I want to start now.”
Netanyahu linked the timing to a shift in US public opinion. Citing fraying support since the Gaza war began in October 2023, he said deteriorating sentiment “correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media,” and accused unnamed countries of having “basically manipulated” the platforms to “hurt us badly.” A Pew survey conducted in March found 60% of US adults held an unfavourable view of Israel and 59% expressed little or no confidence in Netanyahu on world affairs, both seven points higher than a year earlier.
The Israeli leader has been seeking to build defence ties with Gulf Arab states as a long-term security architecture in parallel to the US relationship.
On Iran, Netanyahu declined to discuss Israeli military plans or a timetable, but said that if the Iranian regime “is indeed weakened or possibly toppled, I think it’s the end of Hezbollah, it’s the end of Hamas, it’s probably the end of the Houthis, because the whole scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran built collapses.” Asked if regime change was possible, he replied: “Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No.”
Netanyahu also acknowledged that only after the February 28 war began did Israeli planners recognise Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly 20% of the world’s oil normally passes. “It took a while for them to understand how big that risk is, which they understand now.”
The aid remarks are from the same “60 Minutes” episode in which Netanyahu said the war on Iran had “accomplished a great deal, but it’s not over”, and arrive as oil hovers around $104 a barrel amid an active US naval blockade of Iranian ports and rejection of the latest Pakistani-mediated Iranian counter-proposal.
Source: Ada Derana (Reuters).
