Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that “Iran is being destroyed” as the U.S. and Israel target its ballistic missile and nuclear programs from the air — but he said meaningful regime change would require a “ground component.”
“You don’t want to replace one ayatollah with another,” Netanyahu said at a news conference. “You don’t want to replace Hitler with Hitler.”
He said the Iranian people will ultimately “have to rise up at this time.”
“We can create situations, but you know, they have to take advantage of those situations at a certain point,” he said.
No revolution can come “just out of thin air,” he added. “You can do a lot of things from the air, and we’re doing (them), but … there has to be a ground component as well.”
His comments left open the possibility that such grassroots action could take many forms. “There are many possibilities for this ground component, and I take the liberty of not sharing all of those possibilities with you.”
The comments came hours after President Donald Trump, speaking in the Oval Office, said he would not send US troops to the Middle East.
Netanyahu also repeatedly denied allegations that Israel effectively dragged the US into the war. Trump did not need to be explained about the nuclear threat posed by Iran – “he explained it to me, I didn’t explain it to him,” the prime minister said.