Netanyahu Vows Israel Will Join Flydubai Probe, Promises to Uncover Iran’s Role

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Wednesday that Israel will participate in the investigation of the Flydubai co-pilot suspected in the dramatic incident aboard a flight approaching Israel, adding that investigators will soon determine if Iran had any connection to the event.

In an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, Netanyahu emphasized that he currently lacks the information needed to attribute the incident to Tehran.

“What we know is that the attacker is an Omani national,” Netanyahu said regarding the co-pilot who carried out the assault.

Netanyahu described screams emanating from the cockpit as the aircraft approached Israel and noted that an Israeli passenger, identified as Yaniv, rushed toward the cockpit.

Netanyahu’s Account of the Flydubai Incident

According to Netanyahu, the Indian pilot who was stabbed “showed incredible heroism” by managing, despite heavy bleeding, to unlock the cockpit door.

“The Israeli passenger burst in, saw the attacking co-pilot hover over the instruments,” Netanyahu said. “He wasn’t sitting in one of the two pilot seats, but he was attempting to jam the instruments.”

Netanyahu explained that the passenger threw the attacker backward, took the controls, and pulled back on the stick while another Israeli passenger and an air crew member helped restrain the attacker.

Reserve pilots who had been in the passenger area then entered the cockpit and stabilized the aircraft, which Netanyahu said had gone into a nosedive and sustained damage to its rudder and tail.

“The amazing heroism here of the Indian pilot, the Israeli passenger and his colleagues, and those pilots managed to prevent a 9/11 disaster, because that’s what it looks like was happening,” he said.

‘No Specific Warning’

Sciutto asked Netanyahu whether his warning a day earlier about potential attacks ahead of the election was based on intelligence related to the Flydubai incident.

“No, not specifically,” Netanyahu replied.

“What we had is a lot of information streaming in that Iran’s proxies, particularly Hezbollah and Hamas, were planning attacks against Israel and Israeli civilians abroad. But I can’t tell you that we had any specific warning about this.”

Netanyahu said the suspect is being interrogated in Saudi Arabia and that he expects him to be transferred to the United Arab Emirates.

“I spoke to the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and he agreed that Israel would join the interrogation,” Netanyahu said. “So we’ll find out very soon if Iran had anything to do with it, but I can’t say that in advance of the conclusion of the interrogation.”

He later added: “We know that Iran is sponsoring a lot of this, but I can’t speak specifically of this.”

Netanyahu did, however, assert that Iran was behind a separate attack in Britain.

“They did stand behind the attack in Britain. We passed that information to the Brits,” he said, before criticizing London for imposing sanctions on Israel days later. “The cynicism and the hypocrisy here is unbelievable.”

Iran Nuclear Program: ‘It’s Not an Intelligence Assessment. It’s Intelligence’

The interview then shifted to Iran and reports that Tehran may be attempting to rebuild its nuclear infrastructure.

“It will if it can,” Netanyahu said when asked whether Iran would try to resume its nuclear program.

“But I think President Trump’s actions, the blockade, are very effective in crippling this regime. And obviously, yes, they will try to resuscitate their nuclear program, and it’s something that we’re obviously tracking all the time.”

Netanyahu stated that his goal and US President Donald Trump’s goal are the same: preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

He argued that the economic blockade was “really crippling the IRGC economy” and said Iran was “reeling from this economic blockade.”

When asked whether the war had failed to achieve Israel’s objectives because Iran’s highly enriched uranium had not been secured, Netanyahu rejected the premise.

“I think, first of all, it achieved a great objective,” he said. “They’re on the verge of manufacturing nuclear weapons, atomic bombs, and if we hadn’t acted, they’d have them already, and they probably would have used them, and that would have changed history.”

When Sciutto asked what intelligence assessment supported that claim, Netanyahu replied: “It’s not an intelligence assessment. It’s intelligence. We had it very clear. That’s why we had to act.”

Netanyahu compared the nuclear threat to cancer.

“You know you have a big lump of cancer, and you know one thing: if you don’t remove it, then you’re going to die,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that the cancer can’t come back. So we have to be on constant alert.”

Netanyahu Rejects Reports of Pre-October 7 Warnings

Sciutto also pressed Netanyahu on recent reports that Egypt and the UAE had warned him ahead of the October 7 attacks and asked whether he accepted personal responsibility for not doing more to prevent them.

“First of all, those reports are false,” Netanyahu said. “They didn’t give me any such warnings. That’s completely false.”

He said “elements” in neighboring countries and political opponents were promoting what he called lies.

“I didn’t receive such warnings,” he said.

When asked whether there was anything he wished he had done differently before the attack, Netanyahu said there had been no solid intelligence assessment warning of such an assault.

“In fact, the intelligence assessments were the exact opposite, including days before the attack,” he said.

Netanyahu said security meetings held shortly before October 7 had concluded that “Hamas is deterred” and wanted economic benefits.

“So clearly, we were all blindsided by this,” he said.

He added that the failure should nevertheless be investigated.

“We do ask that question, and we’re going to come to the bottom of it, obviously, with a proper investigative effort.”

‘Settler Violence’ Framing a ‘Tremendous Hoax’

Toward the end of the interview, Sciutto challenged Netanyahu over violence by Israelis in the West Bank and asked whether his government had lost control of settler violence.

“The settler violence thing is a tremendous hoax,” Netanyahu responded.

He immediately clarified that he was not denying that violence had occurred.

“It’s about 150, 200 juvenile delinquents who are doing this, and I can’t stomach that,” he said. “I can’t accept vigilante action. We’re a country of laws, so I put the Shin Bet, our security services, against them.”

Netanyahu said he had already condemned such incidents.

“I can’t tolerate vigilantes and I can’t tolerate uncontrolled violence or any kind of violence that is directed against civilians. That’s not something we accept.”

However, he argued that comparing such violence with Palestinian terrorism created a false equivalence.

“To compare this is like to compare an olive to a toxic tree,” Netanyahu said.

He cited figures on shootings, explosive-device attacks, stabbings, car-ramming attacks, suicide attacks, and kidnappings against Israelis and said the scale was fundamentally different.

At the end of the interview, Netanyahu also addressed the future of Israeli forces in Gaza and Lebanon.

He said Israel would remain in security corridors in both arenas as long as Hamas and Hezbollah retained the ability to threaten Israel.

“Once these two malign forces, these terrorist monsters, are defeated,” Netanyahu said, “then I think a whole new opportunity for peace and for prosperity occurs in the Middle East, both for us and for our Arab neighbors.”

Source link