Today, the Ayatollah regime is not only attacking America, not only attacking Israel, not only attacking the Iranian people, it is attacking the entire Middle East and beyond. They've attacked civilians and Americans and American assets in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, and they've even attacked – through their proxies – Cyprus in Europe. We've warned for decades that their ballistic missile program would be used to attack these targets far and wide, and if they're not stopped, that's just the beginning. The death cult in Iran is trying to blackmail the world by closing a key international maritime route, the Straits of Hormuz. It won't work. Israel is helping in its own way, in intel and other means, the American effort to open the straits of Hormuz. But I want to ask you to imagine how the Ayatollah regime would be able to blackmail the entire world if they had ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Just imagine what they would do. Look at what they're doing now and imagine what they would do if they had ballistic missiles, international-range ballistic missiles and nuclear-tipped warheads. Just imagine what a great threat that would be. 

So today Israel and the United States are protecting America, Israel, the entire Middle East, but I venture to say the entire world. Despite the fake news that has unfortunately been spread since the start of the war 20 days ago, we are winning, and Iran is being decimated. Iran's missile and drone arsenal is being massively degraded and will be destroyed. Hundreds of their launchers have been destroyed, their stockpiles of missiles are being hit hard, and so are the industries that produce them. That's important. In Rising Lion, we destroyed missiles and we destroyed a lot of the nuclear infrastructure. But what we're destroying now are the factories that produce the components to make these missiles and to make the nuclear weapons that they're trying to produce. We're wiping out their industrial base in a way that we didn't do before. Iran's air defenses have been rendered useless. Their navy is lying at the bottom of the sea. Today we hit the other part of their navy in the Caspian Sea. Their air force is nearly destroyed. Iran's command and control structure is in utter chaos. And I can tell you that there's still more work to do, and we're going to do it. 

And I want to close these opening remarks with one other fake news, and that is that Israel somehow dragged the US into a conflict with Iran. Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on. President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America, and may I add, I think what is also good for future generations. In this case, those interests are absolutely clear, and so is the clarity of our achievements. Together in close coordination with President Trump, close coordination between America and Israel, our militaries, our intelligence services, we're achieving goals at lightning speed. 

But I want to say another word. It's been said that for 40 years I've been saying that Iran is a danger to Israel and a danger to the world. That is true. You know who else said that? President Trump, 47 years ago, when the Iranian thugs took over the American embassy, he said how dangerous this regime is. In his first term in office, he didn't need any convincing. He said the Iranian nuclear deal was the worst deal that he'd ever seen, and he walked out of it. Right before his second term, before he was re-elected, I went to see him in Mar-a-Lago. The first thing he said to me was, ‘Bibi, we've got to make sure that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons.’ He said that to me. I didn't say it to him. He didn't need any convincing there either. 

Now why did he say that? Because for more than four decades, this regime, as I said in the beginning of my remarks, is chanting, death to Israel, death to America. But they say Israel is only the small Satan standing in their way. The great Satan is the United States of America. And these ideological fanatics, these lunatics, they find their raison d'etre, their reason for being, is wiping out Western civilization and America that leads it. They have claimed the lives, they've maimed and wounded thousands of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. They killed the American marines in Beirut. They bombed your embassies. They tried to assassinate the American president, Donald Trump, not once but twice. Now they blackmail for oil. Just imagine what they would do, what they're capable of doing, if these lunatics had nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to every American city and every European city and everywhere around the globe. This is a danger for the entire world. It's certainly a danger for Israel. It's certainly a danger for America. 

We see eye to eye on that, President Trump and I, Israel and America. But I think if people are honest, if leaders are honest, they would understand that we're not only fighting our fight, we're fighting their fight. I speak to dozens of world leaders, dozens. They all know that. And privately, they all say that. They say that privately, but I say it publicly. The world owes a debt of deep indebtedness, deep indebtedness, to President Trump for leading this effort to safeguard our future.”