Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel would “finish the job” of ending the threat of a nuclear Iran, as he stood next to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his first visit to the Middle East in his new role.
“Over the last 16 months, Israel has dealt a mighty blow to Iran’s terror axis. Under the strong leadership of President Donald] Trump, and with your unflinching support, I have no doubt that we can, and will, finish the job,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said that he had a “common strategy” with Trump, which could not be revealed fully to the public, but that included a commitment to open the so-called “gates of hell” against Hamas. He said that he could not say when the “gates” would open, but said that “they surely will, if all our hostages are not released, until the last one of them.”
Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu alongside US Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “President Trump and I are fully coordinated with a shared strategy. Not everything can be revealed—including when the gates of hell will open.” pic.twitter.com/FaLgAf8kcf
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) February 16, 2025
“I’ve said, and I’m going to repeat it again, because it’s so true: President Trump is the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House. And the visit in Washington reflected that in every way, and your visit here reflects it in every way.”
Rubio visited a day after three additional hostages were released from Gaza, including a U.S. citizen, following Trump’s threat to allow Israel to do whatever it wanted to Hamas if all hostages were not released by noon Saturday.
Israel refrained from attacking after Hamas agreed to stick to the original agreement to release three hostages, in exchange for Palestinian terror convicts, after initially saying that it would be suspending the ceasefire agreement.
In his own remarks, Rubio stressed the role of the Iranian regime in every aspect of conflict in the Middle East — whether Hamas, or Hezbollah, or the West Bank, or anywhere else that terrorist groups attacked their neighbors. “It is the single greatest source of instability in the region,” he said, adding that “there can never be a nuclear Iran.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
