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Netanyahu on 60 Minutes: "You Go In and You Take It Out" (May 2026)
Netanyahu on CBS 60 Minutes: "You go in, and you take it out".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: The 2026 60 Minutes Interview · 60 Minutes · uploaded 2026-05-11 · 14:29
Original: youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjNXliwdg · IPFS QmXCfsjAeV3GStzZoD31RqBL8Ta7iq4pJgjq8Kkp6PaMgq
What this video is evidence for
In his first US broadcast interview since the war began (60 Minutes, CBS, May 10, 2026, with Major Garrett), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war with Iran "is not over, because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran."
Asked how the uranium would be removed, he answers in six words:
"You go in and you take it out."
Garrett presses: "With what? Special Forces from Israel, Special Forces of the United States?" Netanyahu: "Well, I'm not gonna talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, 'I want to go in there.' And I think it can be done physically." Asked whether it can be taken by force without an agreement, he says: "I'm going to dodge them."
Put this beside the 60 Minutes report on the same uranium (April 2026), where former Assistant Secretary of Defense Andrew Weber says securing it would take "thousands of U.S. troops." Israel's prime minister is describing a ground mission inside Iran, and telling an American audience that the American President wants to "go in there."
In the same interview Netanyahu says he wants to phase out the $3.8 billion a year in US military aid to Israel over the next ten years.
Where this fits: see American Soldiers Iran Videos for the full explanation and sources.
Transcript
Machine transcription (apple-speechanalyzer) of the full 00:14:29. It can mishear names and words, so check exact wording against the video before quoting it.
The ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was tested again today by suspected Iranian drone strikes in the Persian Gulf, another spurt of hostilities in a war that has now spread from the Gulf to Lebanon, further complicating White House efforts to close a deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stabilize energy prices. With so much at stake, and as the war stretches into its 11th week, our CBS News colleague, Major Garrett, spoke yesterday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is Netanyahu's first U.
S. broadcast interview since the war began. He was careful with his words, but if you listen closely, you can find signs of where the war and the region may be headed. Is the war with Iran over? And if it isn't, who will decide when it is?
I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over, because there's still nuclear material. Enrich uranium that has to be taken out of Iran. There is still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports, there are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there.
there's work to be done. How do you envision the highly enriched uranium will be removed from Iran. You go in and you take it out. With what? Special Forces from Israel, Special Forces of the United States.
Well, I'm not gonna talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, I want to go in there. And I think it can be done physically. That's not the problem, if you have an agreement, and you go in, and you take it out. Why not? That's the best way.
What if there isn't an agreement? Can it be taken out by force? Well, you're gonna ask me these questions. I'm going to dodge them, because I'm not going to talk about our military possibilities, plans, or anything of the kind. And I'm just trying to get at how long is it going to take to achieve that aim?
I'm not gonna give a timetable to it, but I'm gonna say that's a terrifically important mission. Hours before we sat down with the Prime Minister, Israel targeted Iranian backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. This is the second front in the war with Iran. much more Israel's than America's. Is it possible, Mr.
Prime Minister, that the war with Iran could end, but the war with Hezbollah could continue? That these would be separate and divergent battlefields? Well, they should be. What Iran would like to do is to say, no, you know, if we achieve a ceasefire here, we want to see as far as... They do.
Clearly. You know why? Because they want Kuzbala to stay there and continue to torture Lebanon, continue to hold its people hostage and continue to... Will you accept that? No.
No, we've... Even if President Trump asks you to. Well, look, he understands what I'm saying. I mean, we are... We want to get rid of that danger, to our communities, to our cities, they rocket our cities all the time.
They rocket our communities. And, of course, would you want to live like that? So this could go on? Yeah, but... Even if Iran is solved?
I hope... No, if Iran, if this regime is indeed weakened or possibly toppled, I think it's the end of Hezbah, it's the end of Hamas. It's probably the end of the hutis, because the whole scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran built collapses if the regime in Iran collapses. Do you believe it is possible to topple the Iranian regime? I think that you can't predict when that happened.
Is it possible, yes. Is it guaranteed? No. But in the days before the war, according to a New York Times investigation, the Prime Minister presented a more optimistic case to the president. And the New York Times reports as follows, quote, In the situation room on February 11, Mr.
Netanyahu made a hard sell. suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change, and expressing the belief that a joint U.S. Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic. Is that correct?
No, that's actually incorrect, because... In what ways is it incorrect? It's incorrect in the sense that I said, Oh, well, it's guaranteed we can do it, and so on. In the confines of that conversation. Oh, you noted the uncertainty.
Not only did I know that, we both agreed, you know, that there was both uncertainty and risk involved. And I remember that we, I said, and he said, that the danger, there's danger in action and taking action. But there's greater danger in not taking action. And continuing what the New York Times reported. Mr.
Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions, they portrayed as pointing to certain victory, adding the regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz. Is that factually incorrect? I don't think we could quantify it, exactly. But I think that the problem of the hormone straits was understood as the fighting went on. I think that's.
It became understood. It became understood. Was it misread at the beginning? I think I'm not sure it was misread, but, you know, there's a great risk for Iran to do it. And it took a while for them to understand how big that risk is, which they understand that.
No, I don't claim perfect foresight, and nobody had perfect foresight. Neither did the Iranians. Also, not foreseen, the degree of Iranian military retribution against neighboring Gulf states and the damage it has caused. The Prime Minister told us we'd be surprised how many Arab states are interested in strengthening ties with Israel. I now see the possibility of the expansion, and the deepening of the agreements we do have to alliances with Arab states of the kind that we never even dreamed of.
There is concern rising among the Gulf Monarchies that it will not allow and does not want Israel to exercise strategic dominance over the Middle East. So has any of this been jeopardized? I'm hearing different things. I'm hearing the fact from Arab countries, which I won't get into. All of them?
No. But some of them, and I never heard that before. Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel, because that, in fact, deters Iran. Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel, because we can do amazing things with Israel. That was clearly the trajectory before this conflict.
It's more than you think now, in ways that I cannot, I guess, will become public. Oh, you know, I can't give everything to 60 minutes or to you in one shot, but I'm telling you, that the degree of economic operation. On energy, on AI, on quantum, the areas where Israel is so strong, and they see the possibility now of sharing the fruits of these capabilities with them, and that's happening right now. Also happening now, or later this week, a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump. China is the world's largest importer of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
We were curious about China's military involvement with Iran. I'd like to ask you about what you know about China providing materially valuable military support to what remains of the Iranian regime. True. China gave certain amount of support, and particular components of missile manufacturing. But I can't say more than that.
Does that disturb you? Well, I didn't like it. 'Cause it's apparently doing it right now. Could be. Could be.
I don't want to speak for China. I don't want to speak also. But you have eyes and ears on this. Yeah, well, you know, um... But I also have a closed mouth, when necessary.
American military aid to Israel has enjoyed bipartisan consensus for decades. It is now $3.8 billion per year, and subject to new political scrutiny because of shifting public attitudes about Israel and foreign aid in general. Do you believe it's time for the state of Israel to reexamine and possibly reset its financial relationship to the United States, meaning what the United States provides to Israel on an annual basis? Absolutely.
And I've said this to President Trump. I've said it to our own people. Their jaws dropped, but I said, look... What do you mean? What are you saying?
I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have, because we receive $3.8 billion a year. And I think that it's time that we wean ourselves from the remaining military support. Can you give me a timetable? I said, Let's start now and do it over the next, uh, decade over the next 10 years, but I want to start now.
I don't want to wait for the next Congress. I wanna start now. Well versed in American politics, the Prime Minister is keenly aware of declining support for Israel. According to a recent Pew survey, 60% of U.S.
adults reported having an unfavorable view of Israel, up nearly 20 points in four years. One of the big reasons, the war in Gaza, where, according to the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry, more than 70,000 people have been killed. That includes civilians, as well as Hamas terrorists. Netanyahu attributes the reputational harm to Israel almost entirely to social media, which he calls the eighth front of the war. It's this.
This is yours, right? Do not immune, either. Because you can penetrate this machine. You can penetrate this, this little instrument. And you can say about major Garrett, anything you want, and I can paint you as a monster.
If I say it often enough, enough people will believe it. Do you believe Israel is at risk of losing this war on that social media front? And this is particularly, I believe, important in America for younger Americans, Republican and Democrat, scrolling through images, and they would use words like barbaric, in Gaza, and in Lebanon. Israel has gone to unbelievable lens. to get innocent civilians out of harm's way.
We text message millions of text messages to them, make millions of phone calls to them, pamphlets, leaflets, you name it, okay? We have seen the deterioration of it, support for Israel in the United States. Almost, I would say, it correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media. And that, by itself, is not what caused it, and I don't believe in, you know, in censoring them or anything, but I'll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media, and they do it in a clever way.
And that's something that has hurt us badly. Is it your belief, Mr. Prime Minister, that nothing that Israel has done, tactically or strategically, has made no mistakes, either in Gaza or the West Bank that have, in their own way, contributed to this negative impression of Israel, whether it's on social media or someplace else? No, of course. Look, it's war.
And in war, armies sometimes miss, and civilians die. And these are mistakes. These are not deliberate things that happen. Israel was besieged on the media front on the propaganda front. And we have not done well on the propaganda war.
The International Criminal Court, which neither Israel nor the U.S. recognize, has accused the Prime Minister of War Crimes, for Israel's conduct in Gaza, where he says he has not yet achieved one of his most important goals, disarming Hamas. Now what? Somebody has to disarm them.
Somebody has to, then, demilitize Gazo. I would say, disarm, demilitarize, de radicalize, because you don't want these fanatics there. Is that Israel's obligation, or is that the international community's obligation through the Board of Peace? And some... Major?
Major? Find me the countries who would do it. You know, if it comes down to us. then we'll have to do it, but we'll choose the time and the circumstances in which to do it, because, you know, we've got a few other things. But we are not gonna let Hamas ever threaten Israel again.
It'll have to be done, it could be done the hard way, it could be done the easy way. I always prefer the easy way, because, unlike my caricature image, having been to war, having seen the tragedy of war, having experienced it in my own family. You don't readily dispatch people. Mm hmm. Young men, sometimes young women, into the battlefield.
You know, though, Mr. Prime Minister, there is the impression about you, that it is hunger that people perceive in you for conflict. That's funny, you know? Because for years. I was considered, right, before the October 7th, I was considered, perhaps, the most restrained Prime Minister in Israel's history.
I was conceived as being, you know, politically tough, but militarily very restrained. Obviously changed on October 7th, because they were gonna annihilate us. I didn't think it was just an attack by Hamas. I saw it as it was. an attack by the Iran axis to try to annihilate us.
through a noose of death. And I said in the second day of the war. I said we're going to change the Middle East. We're going to change this condition where they're ganging up on us, thinking they're going to wipe out the one and only Jewish state, wipe out 3,500 years of Jewish history. It's not gonna happen.
Not on my watch. And I said to the Israeli citizens, not on your watch.
Last Updated: 2026-09-27