Summary
CBS’s flagship news magazine show “60 Minutes” recently sat down for an hour-and-20-minute interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 14 minutes of which were aired by the network on Sunday.
That segment generated headlines regarding the prime minister’s assertion that Israel should wean itself off US military aid, that the war with Iran is not yet over, and that Iran is the scaffolding holding up Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis -- and that if it falls, they are likely to fall as well.
But it was the full 80-minute interview, which CBS posted online, that was far more revealing -- both for what the prime minister said, and for what he didn’t say.
Israel has now fought two rounds with Iran since last June and has -- along with the US -- inflicted untold damage on the country’s military and nuclear infrastructure.
Against that backdrop, it was striking to hear Netanyahu say that what he viewed as perhaps the most impressive operational achievement of both Rising Lion and Roaring Lion was not the damage done to Iran’s physical infrastructure, but rather to the brain trust behind its nuclear program.
“We have a problem. I recognize it. And we have to get our act together”
“I think the most pointed success is knocking out 20 top nuclear scientists who were working on the atomic bombs to be used against Israel, America, and anyone else,” he said, noting that 12 scientists were killed in the first minute of the campaign last June, and another eight during the current operation.
Taking out that amount of know-how, he said, doesn’t eliminate the knowledge, but it does significantly set back the nuclear program.
That Netanyahu treated the elimination of key Iranian scientists as the most important operational success of the war reflects Israel’s long-standing doctrine that human capital -- whether scientists in this case or political or military leaders in others -- and not hardware, is what matters most.
The interview was also revealing in another respect: how Netanyahu continues to frame the question of accountability for October 7.
The interviewer, Major Garrett, asked Netanyahu point-blank what his “level of accountability or responsibility” was for October 7, and he responded -- as he has done consistently -- that “everybody bears some responsibility. Yeah, from the top, from the prime minister down.”
And then, after repeating that he wants to establish a bipartisan commission -- rather than a state commission of inquiry -- to look into October 7, he pivoted to what is sure to become a recurring Likud theme in the upcoming election campaign: What about everything that happened after October 7?
Extracting Israel from the “horrible noose of death that Iran put on us” was also his responsibility, he said. In other words, don’t fixate solely on October 7; look as well at the sea changes in the region wrought by the decisions and actions he took afterward.
That same pattern -- acknowledging a problem while sidestepping personal responsibility for it -- surfaced elsewhere in the interview as well.
While unwilling to accept direct responsibility for the failure of October 7, he did admit that Israel had failed miserably in the public diplomacy battle, saying this was due in large part to an army of bots that simply took over on social media.
He candidly acknowledged that Israel was overwhelmed by the social media landslide and did not act in time to prevent it.
“While we were fighting the physical, military battle on seven battlefields, seven fronts of war, we were completely exposed on the eighth front, the media war, and really the social media war.”
What he didn’t do, however, was take any responsibility for the failure on that front, while never being shy about taking credit for success on the others.
He said the way Israel fought the social media battle - where “several countries” tried to break American sympathy for Israel by using “bot farms” and “fake addresses” - was akin to the Polish cavalry fighting F-35s.
“We have a problem. I recognize it. And we have to get our act together,” he said.
While stopping short of taking responsibility for the failure, it was still an unusually explicit recognition that Israel has strategically failed in the digital arena. More significantly, he did not dismiss the issue; rather, he framed it as a genuine national security challenge.
The interview also offered insight into how Netanyahu currently views the Iranian threat and the timeline that drove Israel’s military decisions.
He repeatedly stressed that the urgency in striking Iran was not only about the nuclear issue or the ballistic missiles themselves, but about ballistic missile factories that Iran wanted to move underground.
This suggests that Israel’s clock was tied not just to a nuclear breakout timeline, but also to an Iranian industrial survivability timeline. Once the Iranians moved missile production capabilities underground, Israel feared it could lose the ability to significantly degrade Iran’s missile production capacity for years.
Netanyahu’s answers regarding both Russia and China were also telling because they highlighted not only Israel’s security concerns, but also its diplomatic balancing act.
Garrett offered up questions about both countries that provided Netanyahu with an easy opportunity to slam them for their support of Iran, but he demurred, clearly wanting to keep the door open to ties with both.
Asked whether he was disturbed that China had provided, as Garrett put it, a “certain amount of support and particular components of missile manufacturing” to Iran, Netanyahu replied: “Well, I didn’t like it, but I think that if China weighs its interests, does it really want to have Iran controlling the waterways that supply the energy that China needs?”
Regarding Russia, he was even more restrained, saying “there’s not been that much support” for Iran from Moscow.“
“Russia maybe thinks that some of the things that Iran does are not necessarily in its interest,” he said, clearly leaving himself diplomatic wiggle room by adding that the Moscow-Tehran relationship is “a mixed bag” rather than “black and white.”
One of the most revealing aspects of the interview was not what Netanyahu said, but what was largely absent from the discussion: the broader Palestinian issue.
Hamas and Gaza were discussed extensively, but almost entirely through a military and security prism — disarmament, demilitarization, smuggling, and deterrence — with virtually no discussion of the Palestinian issue in a broader political or diplomatic context.
Garrett did not bring up the issue, nor did Netanyahu volunteer anything about it. That an 80-minute interview with the prime minister did not include any mention of the Palestinian Authority or Judea and Samaria or the settlements is revealing, showing just how much those issues have been subsumed by something far larger: Iran.
This reveals much about the prime minister’s current worldview: the conflict is framed almost entirely around Iran, its proxies, and the broader fight against radical Islam.
It was perhaps the clearest articulation in a mainstream American interview of the post-October 7 paradigm — namely, that the Palestinian issue is no longer viewed as the core problem, but rather as a secondary front within a much broader struggle against the Iranian axis.
That hierarchy of priorities came through clearly when Netanyahu was asked whether Israel would disarm and dismantle Hamas in Gaza.
“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.”
The takeaway was unmistakable: first things first. Hamas and the broader Palestinian issue are no longer at the head of the line. Not, if this interview is any indication, by a long shot.