Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was not afraid of landing in a country that would enforce the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity broadcast on Wednesday.
“You travel internationally. God forbid you had a medical emergency, and you need to land, and you’re about to land in a country that recognizes the ICC, it could complicate things. Do you worry about that?” Hannity asked.
“Yeah, I think about it. We have special forces. You know, I served with them for five years… let’s give them a new task,” Netanyahu answered.
“It’s the corruption of the international system. It’s an unelected bureaucracy that sits in The Hague that could [not] arrest American soldiers because you don’t recognize this corrupt body any more than we do,” he added.
“They could say that the president of the US is a war criminal, that American soldiers valiantly fight next to us, shoulder-to-shoulder against the tyranny in Tehran, that they’re war criminals; they could pick them up,” he said.
Netanyahu and Hannity also discussed the prime minister’s meeting with US President Donald Trump.
“It was one of the best meetings that we’ve had,” Netanyahu said.
“We have a common commitment. We don’t want to see this fanatic regime in Tehran have nuclear weapons to threaten every American, and to threaten the peace of the world, and to threaten the existence of Israel,” he added.
Netanyahu skeptical of Iran deal prospects
Hannity then asked about the Iran deal and whether Netanyahu believes that there are competing factions within Iran’s leadership, including whether there are “moderates that would like a deal.”
The prime minister responded, “Well, I’m skeptical about the deal. And I say it openly. But the only way it would be achieved is if Iran understood these various factions there.”
“I think they’re not ideological factions as much as they differ on the assessment of how tough we are. That’s it. You know, those who think that the president is very tough, and they should, you know, they say, let’s not confront this guy,” he added.
The two also discussed why Iran has not directly targeted Israel over recent weeks despite US Central Command (CENTCOM) hitting Iranian targets and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launching missiles and drones toward US and US-aligned facilities across the Gulf region.
Israel would respond with ‘terrific force’
“They should know that if we are attacked, we’ll respond with terrific force,” Netanyahu said, adding that he believes that is why Iran has been hesitant to launch attacks directly towards Israel.
The regime is “attacking everybody in sight. It’s attacking Saudi Arabia. It’s attacking Kuwait. It’s attacking Bahrain. It’s attacking the UAE and others,” he said.
“It murdered and maimed tens of thousands of its own citizens. This is what this regime in Iran does today when it doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Now imagine what they would do to the world if they had nuclear weapons,” he said.
Mamdani’s call to arrest Netanyahu
The prime minister also denounced New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s attempt to call for his arrest during a slated September visit to New York for the UN General Assembly.
Mamdani is a “hate-spewing elected official who is pitting one group of New Yorkers against the others. He’s turning them against New York Jews,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu and Hannity also discussed other aspects of the ICC, including former prosecutor Karim Khan.
“It had a prosecutor who issued arrest warrants against me and our former defense minister [Yoav Gallant] as war criminals, supposedly for starvation; starving the people of Gaza.
“We gave a million tons of food for them,” Netanyahu said.
“I’m skeptical about the deal. And I say it openly. But the only way it would be achieved is if Iran understood these various factions there,” he added.