Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar appeared on Newsmax on Sunday, saying President Donald Trump is showing remarkable leadership in addressing Iran's nuclear program.
Sa'ar compared Trump's handling of the Iran crisis to President Bill Clinton's response to Iran's nuclear program in the 1990s.
"Think back to the mid-'90s when President [Bill] Clinton threatened North Korea not to develop nuclear weapons, but eventually, in the historic moment, he didn't act," Sa'ar said. "And therefore today North Korea has nuclear weapons."
Trump, Sa'ar said, acted decisively in concert with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the nuclear threat in the region.
Sa'ar also said there was strong impetus for Israel and the U.S. to strike now because intelligence showed Tehran was preparing to move key elements of its nuclear program into deep underground facilities.
The move would place them beyond the reach of airstrikes, Sa'ar said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax's Greta Van Susteren. The interview was his first with a U.S. media outlet since the war began.
"We understood they are going to take their nuclear program to a very deep underground installation, which it will be immune there," Sa'ar said.
"That moment would put them in a de facto immunity from airstrikes," he added. "So that was the moment that a decision must be taken in order to act."
Sa'ar said letting Iran develop nuclear weapons would dramatically increase the danger posed by a regime that already destabilizes the Middle East and targets U.S. allies.
"Imagine how they will act if they were today with a nuclear umbrella, if they are simply attacking now without a nuclear umbrella all the neighbor states," he said. "It's very dangerous."
Because of those risks, Sa'ar said leaders in Washington and Jerusalem concluded delaying action would only make the situation worse.
"When you realize that diplomacy doesn't work, you need to decide whether to act," Sa'ar said. "Not acting right now was much more dangerous than acting."
Van Susteren noted that the U.S had made repeated attempts to engage Iran diplomatically, including outreach by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.
Sa'ar said those efforts failed because Tehran would not engage on the central issues Washington raised.
"I think that the U.S. tried diplomacy, but Iran even didn't come closer to the demands that the U.S. had put on the table," Sa'ar said.
"They were not ready even to talk," he added, referring to U.S. demands related to Iran's nuclear program, including ending weapons and ballistic missile development and support for militant proxies such as the Houthis.
Because of Iran's refusal, Sa'ar said Trump, Netanyahu, and others had to decide whether to take action.
Sa'ar also noted Israel has had no direct diplomatic engagement with Iran for roughly the past two decades because of the Iranian regime's longstanding commitment to Israel's destruction.
When asked whether Israel had any conversations with Iranian officials in the past 10 to 20 years, Sa'ar replied simply, "No."
"It's a state that swore to eliminate the state of Israel and acted consistently to achieve that," he said.
Sa'ar said Iran has continually tried to weaken Israel by building and financing militant groups across the region.
"They tried to eliminate us by surrounding us with terror proxies like Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis, which they financed during the years," Sa'ar said.
The Iranian regime's hostility is not limited to Israel, he added.
"So this regime is probably not with good intentions towards us, but neither to the United States," Sa'ar said.
He pointed out that attacks are also being staged "deliberately [against] all United States allies in the region.
"You can see today that they are attacking deliberately all United States allies in the region, including countries which are not friendly with Israel but are friends of the United States like Qatar and others."
Sa'ar also dismissed claims circulating in the U.S. suggesting Israel might seek territorial expansion inside Iran.
"It is ridiculous because Iran is 1,500 kilometers from us," he said. "They don't share borders with us.
"We have Jordan and Iraq, quite big countries between us and Iran. We never had a border with Iran, and we don't have any such intention.
"Anyone who is saying that never looked at the map."
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