CNBC Exclusive: Transcript: Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu Speaks with CNBC’s Sara Eisen on “Squawk on the Street” Today

WHEN: Today, Wednesday, June 3, 2026

WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk on the Street"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" (M-F, 9AM-12PM ET) today, Wednesday, June 3. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://global-deals.online/video/2026/06/03/netanyahu-says-he-and-trump-have-tactical-disagreements-but-agree-overall.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2026/06/03/israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-u-s-reverse-blockade-in-strait-of-hormuz-is-stroke-of-genius.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2026/06/03/israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-touts-nvidia-investment-says-buy-anything-in-israel.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2026/06/03/israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-weare-fighting-for-the-good-guys-against-iran.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2026/06/03/israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-expects-iran-regime-change-a-doesnat-know-when.html%3C/a%3E, and https://global-deals.online/video/2026/06/03/watch-cnbcas-full-interview-with-israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu.html%3C/a%3E.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

PART I

SARA EISEN: Hi. Good morning, Carl, from Jerusalem this morning. I'm here in the Israeli Prime Minister's office, and joining me right now is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Thank you for having us today.

PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Good to be with you. Welcome

EISEN: Yeah, thank you very much. It's good to be here. Wanted to start with the news, which is President Trump saying today that Iran has already agreed that it will not have a nuclear weapon. Do you trust that? Is that good enough for you?

NETANYAHU: Well, I think it's a precondition, but you have to make sure that they actually don't do it because they always lie and they always cheat, and therefore we have to have a way to get out the nuclear material and to dismantle the infrastructure that they have, the enrichment sites for uranium to make atomic bombs. I think all that is on the table, and I think the President believes that he can get this through diplomatic pressure and tough negotiations, and I think he should be given a chance.

EISEN: So, let's talk about the call that you had with him this week, which is getting a lot of attention. The president confirmed that he, that he said, "You're effing crazy." How did you react to that? What really happened in that call?

NETANYAHU: Well, I'm not going to get into details of our conversations. We've had thousands, well, a lot, a lot of them. And if you think this is a crisis, you should be in some other conversations, but we've always found a way to, we have so many agreements. We agree on the main things. We want to get Iran, the nuclear program in Iran, finished. We want to make sure that Iran doesn't pose a threat to Israel, to the Middle East, to America, that it doesn't develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, not only to Israel and to every capital in Europe, but to every city in the United States. That's our common goal. That's what we set out to do, and to expand the circle of peace, as the President and I did in the Abraham Accords together. So, we have common goals. Sometimes we have, as in the best of families, you have these tactical disagreements. We always find a way to work them out, and we do so as great friends. We can disagree in the morning, and by the afternoon, we have common actions.

EISEN: So, I was going to say, has your relationship at all shifted with him?

NETANYAHU: No, no. This has been, this has been a great relationship because he's been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House, and he, he respects me. I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences.

EISEN: Did he say that, that you'd be in jail if not for me?

NETANYAHU: Look, I'm not going to get into the details, but he's been very vocal about the absurdity of this fake trial that I'm going through. You know, they asked me, I don't know if this came up with the last time you were here, but since then—

EISEN: Two years ago yeah.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, well, since then they've asked me in the court, you know, I'm supposed to be receiving gifts. So one of the first things they said to me is Prime Minister, 30 years ago, your five-year-old child received a Bugs Bunny gift from a friend, so this trial is ridiculous. The President understands what a, what a ridiculous trial it is, and he's been very vocal about that and I appreciate it. So, but it's unraveling on its own, it's just so ridiculous.

EISEN: Okay, so I know you're fighting that, but on the call, what is your expectation for what the president expects from you now when it comes to Lebanon and fighting Hezbollah?

NETANYAHU: I think he understands that Lebanon has been taken hostage by Hezbollah. It's basically taken over the country. It's an Iranian proxy that puts all the citizens of Lebanon at gunpoint, and uses Lebanon as a platform to launch terror missiles into our cities, to launch killer drones against our civilians, and so if we want to save Lebanon, if we want to get a Lebanese Israeli peace as I do, we have to disarm Hezbollah, and we have to demilitarize Lebanon, and I think that's a goal that it's not, I think I know that this is a goal that the President and I share, and that's what we have to do. So, we, we're trying to, how shall I say this, degrade Hezbollah, so that a free and independent Lebanon can emerge. We're still working on it, but we're on route.

EISEN: But did you, did you tell him that you would stop in order to get the peace talks going?

NETANYAHU: No, I think what we discussed is something else. They were firing, Hezbollah was firing these terror missiles into our cities. You know, they hide behind their civilians and they fire at our civilians, like Hamas in Gaza. They commit double war crimes, and we are responding, we're targeting the terrorists themselves. The terrorist chieftains, many of them are in Beirut, so they're giving orders to target our cities from Beirut, and we said, if you keep on targeting Israeli territory and our cities and our communities, then we'll take out these terrorist chieftains in Beirut with surgical strikes, and an understanding was seemed to have evolved two days ago, really, that they will not target Israeli territory, and we will not target the terrorists in Beirut.

EISEN: Has that, has that helped?

NETANYAHU: I'm not sure because it looks like, we're checking this, that they fired into our territory. In this case, we'll, if that happens, we'll obviously respond, but I think that on the whole that's a beginning of a change, but ultimately the change has to be to disarm Hezbollah, you know. You can't have these genocidal terrorists taking over the, this poor country of Lebanon, using it to try to invade Israel the way that Hamas invaded us, murder our civilians, decapitate our men, rape our women. It's just, no country would accept that.

EISEN: And yet, you're already facing resistance. I mean, President Macron of France this week said there's no justification for the major escalation by Israel in Lebanon. How do you respond to that?

NETANYAHU: The escalation is from Hezbollah, we had a ceasefire, they violated it. Look, the way European leaders cater to radical Islamic minorities in their own countries is shameful because they know the truth. They know that when we act against Iran, that calls death to America, death to Israel, death to everything in between that is not part of their Islamic, Islamist radical ilk, they know we're protecting them as well, but they don't have the guts to stand up and line up with the right thing that will save our civilization against these barbarians.

EISEN: You think they're just doing protecting themselves politically?

NETANYAHU: Yeah, I don't think they're protecting themselves because I think ultimately people identify strength and they identify weakness. And leaders, real leaders, have to stand up to public criticism. They have to stand up to fake vilifications, and you have to do what's right for the security of your country. That's what I've been doing in Israel. I enjoy the not only the support of the people, but the support, the courage, the heroism of our young generation. Everybody said, this is a TikTok generation. They will not fight like you guys fought in your days when I was in the army for five years. They won't do it. They've been amazing, amazing. They fight with such courage, they, with such sacrifice, and such heroism. So I think it's the strength of our people, the strength of our army, and frankly, the strength of our government, and the ability that I've had to pass the decisions that were not popular in the international community, but are absolutely central to assure our survival, and you know, I'm not the first one to do this. People often talk about Churchill, yeah, Churchill was, hailed as a warmonger, an ambassador's a warmonger. They said, why are you upsetting the peace of Europe? What's this thing you want to fight the Nazis all the time, and so on. You said it's the only way I'll save my country, that's the only way I'll save Western civilization. Well, we're faced with an enemy that wants to destroy our country, that wants to destroy your country, that wants to destroy free democracies everywhere, and spread their terrorist ilk around the globe. So, when we fight Iran and its proxies, we're not only fighting our war, we're fighting your war and, frankly, Europe's war as well.

EISEN: And yet the war is so unpopular in the US.

NETANYAHU: Yeah

EISEN: Why do you think that is?

NETANYAHU: I think people don't see the direct connection between the dangers they would face tomorrow with the actions that we're doing today to remove those dangers. Democracies always have that problem, you know. They'll always look at the moment, what's the next election cycle, what's the next headline, and so on. Dictatorships are usually immune to this because they don't really have public opinion to answer to. And the question is, for leaders, it's a big, it's a big challenge, you know. How do you face, you know, attacks on you, political attacks, vilifications, and so on. Do you sort of cower under you say that there's nothing I can do? I have to stop protecting my people because I'm going to get a bad editorial in the Western press, and the answer is no. No, I'd rather get a bad editorial than a positive obituary. You know, our people have died long enough, and what has changed for us is that the kind of recriminations and the kind of lies that are leveled at the Jewish people over the centuries are now being leveled at the Jewish state. There's no difference, no difference. We deliberately kill children, we perform genocide, we're poisoning the wells.

EISEN: The haters say there's a difference between the anti-Israel and anti-some—

NETANYAHU: Oh, yeah they said we're not anti, we're not against the Jewish people, we just don't think there should be a Jewish state. We're not against Americans, we just don't think—

EISEN: Or we just don't like the Israeli numbers.

NETANYAHU: We just don't like, yeah, we're don't like, we're not against Americans, we just don't think there should be an America, and it's not the Israeli government. All Israeli governments will fight, or should fight, to protect our people, or we'll disappear. So, here's the difference now. In previous times, previous centuries, we were vilified, and then two things happened, we were either thrown out of a country or destroyed in that country, eliminated, and this culminated in the greatest horror of them all, the greatest massacre of the world, the Holocaust. Since the birth of the state of Israel, we're still being vilified, but when they come to slaughter us, we say no more, never again. And we fight back, and we fight back, targeting the terrorists, targeting the aggressors, trying to save the people, trying to save those communities, and believe me, in the Middle East, contrary to what people think, many understand that, and in Iran, in Iran, you know, I'm embarrassed to say this, but they named streets after me—

EISEN: I know, you should say that before.

NETANYAHU: In public squares. Yeah, well I know, you should say it, but of course it's taken down by the goons of the regime because they understand we're fighting for the good guys.

EISEN: Why isn't the regime weaker at this point—

NETANYAHU: It's a lot weaker, it's a lot weaker, the action the president—

EISEN: They still seem that they have leverage in this negotiation—

NETANYAHU: The actions that President Trump and I undertook, and that our brave militaries took together in closeness that we've never had before. And I have to tell you again, President Trump has been the greatest friend of Israel ever. We've never had such a friend in the White House. He's outstripped everyone, and that partnership has degraded Iran and knocked out their army, knocked out their navy, knocked out their—

EISEN: But they still control the Strait.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, they control the Straits. But I'll tell you what happened. We've done that, but I could say, you know, we've been, as the US themselves said, we've been the model ally, probably the only truly fighting ally that the United States has today, and we've wreaked a lot of damage to this regime, not destroyed it, but weakened it. We see the cracks propagating in the regime, we see them trying, they can't hold down to their money machine, they're afraid that they'll lose the ability to even pay their goons, so that they've been weakened. It's not over, but they've been weakened, and that's why it's possible to press them not only militarily but economically with this blockade that I thought it was a fantastic idea. So they're still there, but they're much weakened. I think Israel has never been stronger, Iran has never been weaker, and that's due to the partnership between the United States and Israel, President Trump and myself.

EISEN: Okay, if you would just hang with us for a moment, we're going to take a quick break, Mr. Prime Minister. I do want to talk to you a lot more about Iran, also about the Israeli economy, which is booming, and a lot more. We'll be right back here from the Prime Minister's office in Israel with Prime Minister Netanyahu on "Squawk on the Street". Stay with us.

PART II

EISEN: Hi, Carl. Yes, back here with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again. Thank you for the time. You were just talking about the war in Iran and where we are. You know, last night we saw attacks, drone attacks, and missile attacks by Iran on U.S. troops in Kuwait. The images from the Kuwait airport were devastating in Bahrain. So is there a cease fire or not?

NETANYAHU: Look, I think there is a tactical game that is being played, and Iran surely knows what the President has said. That if necessary, there will be a full scale return to military action. You know, it's the President's decision Israel is ready, and the US forces are ready. I think Iran should take that into account. I think they are taking it into account, but they're playing with fire. That's clear.

EISEN: How likely is it that we will see a military escalation here?

NETANYAHU: I leave it to President Trump. I think he's – he understands what's at stake, and he understands also that he's not a pushover. And you see that the Americans responded, you know, and they're not –  I think they've been very effective in the blockade. I think the blockade has been –

EISEN: The Strait of Hormuz.

NETANYAHU: It's been a stroke of genius, the reverse blockade. I think the President is leading a very, very smart policy here, but –

EISEN: But why can't the U.S. just open the Strait of Hormuz?

NETANYAHU: Well, you can, but the, you know, you need ship owners who will take on the financial risk of being hit by a drone or something else, so that can always be fired from many miles away. So, it's a – it's possible militarily, it's not simple. But I think the larger question is, does Iran really want, you know, another round? I don't think they do, but you know, we'll see what – I think somebody says, we'll see what happens.

EISEN: Yeah.

NETANYAHU: So we will see what happens.

EISEN: So, should Trump – would you encourage President Trump to make a deal, and how will we know if the deal is in the best interest of Israel?

NETANYAHU: You know, whatever I talk to the President, I like to leave to our, you know, into our private conversations. But I can say that we have common goals, we want to achieve them. President always says it could be done the easy way, could be done the hard way. If you can do it the easy way, do it the easy way. And if you need to, you'll do it the hard way.

EISEN: So, if the deal is not satisfactory that is made to Israel, what would you do then?

NETANYAHU: I think we have common goals. Let's give it a chance to achieve them.

EISEN: Do you have common goals on how this war should end?

NETANYAHU: I think it's an open question, because the reality is open. You can see that. Things are – I know the President is weighing many options, and we keep in touch. We talk very often, you know. We talk about–

EISEN: How often?

NETANYAHU: Once every two days, typical. So, we talk it out, but I don't think it makes sense to reveal to Iran the substance – the subject of our conversations. We're trying to achieve identical goals.

EISEN: So, let's talk about this as a goal. You were very critical back in 2015 when President Obama did the JCPOA, which was the Iran nuclear deal. How do you make sure that that's not – this is not just a replay of that?

NETANYAHU: By not having the same deal. Having a better deal. if you have a deal at all.

EISEN: What makes it better?

NETANYAHU: Getting the material out, and then also having inspections that are – you know what the inspection arrangement was in the JCPOA in the previous agreement? You have to –

EISEN: Not tough enough for you.

NETANYAHU: Well, let's see if it's tough enough for any sane person. I mean, it was – we give Iran a month's notice about a place, we have to say where we're going to inspect, and you give them a month's notice. You give them a month's notice, they'll take out all the nuclear material, all the nuclear facilities, and move them elsewhere. You think that's a good inspection regime? I'll just give you one example. There are many other things. They also let them continue to develop centrifuges, which enrich uranium for the bomb, make them 20, 30 times more effective during the time that – of the deal. They would have had a nuclear bomb if the JCPOA had gone on without interference, without sanctions that the U.S. imposed – President Trump imposed – they would have had a nuclear weapon by now. And if we hadn't acted in the twin operations of the Roaring Lion and Rising Lion, Rising Lion, Roaring Lion, Epic Fury, they would have had a nuclear weapon.

EISEN: So, how far did you set them back?

NETANYAHU: Quite a bit. I mean, among other things, we knocked out 20 – 20 of their leading nuclear scientists. That sets you back, you know. The guys who were both developing the, you know, the enrichment, but also developing what we call the weaponization. And so they're gone. There's a lot to work, I mean –

EISEN: But you want the nuclear material out.

NETANYAHU: Yeah.

EISEN: Have they agreed to anything like that?

NETANYAHU: Not yet, but that's, you know, that's the pressure. The pressure is building on them, that's the whole issue.  I think we have to see what will happen. You asked me about the Straits before the break –

EISEN: Yeah, the Strait of Hormuz. Because they're still effectively controlling –

NETANYAHU: Yeah, well, I'll tell you what I think will happen, because I saw this in the 1973 oil embargo on the Western countries, because the Arabs organized an oil embargo on the U.S., and said we won't supply oil if you support Israel, and so on. Okay, so you know what happened after the war? I'll tell you what happened. Everybody shifted. They discovered new sources of oil and energy, and new supply routes. That's what happened right after the Middle East oil embargo. That's what's happening now. Not it is going to happen, it's already happening now. People are going to develop alternative sources, and they're already developing alternative routes. So, instead of all the energy going through the – I have a map here if you can't see – going through the Persian Gulf, it's also going across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea, and there'll be other opportunities. We can have them going directly to the Mediterranean.

EISEN: But it can't make up. I mean, this is what? 20% of global oil exports.

NETANYAHU: Yes, of course you can make it up. Yes, you can make it up. You know, America exports more. You're in Venezuela, that's another.

EISEN: It's coming back.

NETANYAHU: it's coming back and there are many things you can do, and that's what will happen. I mean, as a result of this war, you'll see countries scrambling. I think in Asia, in particular, but also in Europe and elsewhere, scrambling to develop other energy sources and other routes of supply. I'm sure of it.

EISEN: Yeah, no, it's definitely happening, we hear about it. At the beginning of this war, Prime Minister, you were talking about regime change. Why is nobody talking about that now?

NETANYAHU: Why do you say we're not talking about? I said the other day –

EISEN: Because President Trump seems ready to make a deal with this current regime.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, that doesn't mean that he wants this regime to stay. I mean, one of the things that have – you can't quite predict when a regime like that goes under. You didn't predict it in a number of cases. Not in Romania, and not in the, you know, remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the – nobody predicted it. But it happened. Why? Because the cracks were propagating underneath. In fact, you have enormous cracks right now in Iran, and you can't predict what will happen. But I said yesterday in a public forum, I said, look, I believe that ultimately these cracks will propagate and the regime will fall, and we'll do our best to help it happen.

EISEN: So you still think that's coming?

NETANYAHU: I think that we have to help the Iranian people to bring down this regime, and that hasn't changed. But it's not going to happen, you know, exactly at the moment of our choosing. I think they've been enormously weakened. There's just this break between them and the great majority of the people of Iran, which are freedom-loving people. They want democracy, they want good relations with America, they want good relations with Israel, and it could happen. Ultimately, it can happen. These things depend on how weakened they are, and how strong the people believe in change.

EISEN: Who would you like to see lead Iran?

NETANYAHU: So, well, somebody who doesn't want to destroy my country or yours. Somebody who doesn't chant death to Israel, death to America. Somebody who doesn't send terrorists all over the place, and who doesn't try to paralyze the Western world and the entire world with the oil blackmail. That's what I'd like to see. Somebody who give Iran a real future. We don't have a battle with the people of Iran. We have a battle with these Ayatollahs that want to murder us and you. It's the same in Lebanon. We don't have a battle with the people of Lebanon. We have a battle with Hezbollah that terrorizes them and tries to destroy us and you.

EISEN: But you know, with the backlash, is that once you're in these wars, hospitals get hit, citizens get hit, civilians get hit, and then you know, it's ugly. It's messy.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, war is hell, believe me. I've been in a few, I know how bad that is, but we do our best to avoid civilian casualties, unlike the terrorists who do their utmost to inflict civilian casualties, and they don't care about their own people. So yeah, but you have to decide, you know, Western, the Western countries, the democracies have to decide, are you going to give immunity to terrorists because your media, you know, your television stations and your social media distort the reality, and say, oh, anytime you hit a terrorist, you're causing a genocide. I mean, and you know that means that you give them immunity, they can hide behind in hospitals, not behind hospitals, in hospitals, they can hide in schools and in civilian neighborhoods, and there's nothing you can do. Well, there is something you can do. You can warn people to leave, as we have in Gaza and elsewhere, and most of them would leave. Sometimes they're blocked by Hamas or by Hezbollah at gunpoint, but when they leave, you have to take action. Otherwise, you give them immunity, you'll be finished. And in many ways, Israel is fighting this battle against horrendously unfair and fraudulent lies, and the question is, do you succumb to the lies? You say, well, I can't take the lies, and so I'm not going to protect my people. No, I protect my people. We'll fight the lies too. We have to get better at the digital information battle.

EISEN: The world, I mean, the hatred, the hatred toward Israel is only rising by the day.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, well, you know, I think that you're right, but that doesn't mean, okay, so they hate us, and therefore we shouldn't defend ourselves. They hate us because we do defend ourselves and because people distort our defensive action. So, what do we do? Stop defending ourselves, or submit our, you know, submit ourselves to these murders, of course not, we have to fight.

EISEN: You mentioned Gaza. I did want to ask about that because part of the last deal to end that war was that Hamas would disarm. They're still armed, and they're still in charge.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, we've, I think situation has really changed, because right now the communities next to Gaza are flourishing. People, there's tremendous demand for Israeli, these Israeli communities, I mean, population's bigger than it was before the October 7 massacre. Why is that? Because we degraded Hamas because you know they're now holding a fraction of the territory they had before, which they used to attack Israel. There's now buffer zone, and yes, Hamas has to disarm, that's President Trump's plan, that's the principal part.

EISEN: How does he get them to do that?

NETANYAHU: Well, we'll have to discuss how we get them to do that, but one thing we make sure is they don't have arms smuggled in to arm themselves, that's number one, and number two, they're practically, you know, they're not able to launch the missiles at us, they're not able to do this, so we're, you know, we're closing in on them, and we have to decide when we take action and what kind of action we'll do with the border peace. We're talking about that with the administration.

EISEN: So that's moving forward.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, not everything is achieved at once, but I think if you look at where Israel was on October 7, when everybody said Israel is finished, you know, the Iran axis of Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen, and so on. Israel has no chance. Two and a half years later, that axis has been shattered. It may still be around, but it's a shadow of its former self. Still trying to attack us, still trying to terrorize us, but a lot weaker because of the decisions we made, the partnership with the United States and President Trump, and the courage, incredible courage of our soldiers.

EISEN: The other thing that's happened is that your economy has been remarkably resilient. I was here two years ago, we sat in the middle of the war, and you said, buy Israel. Turns out that was a good call. The stock market is at a record high. The shekel has been soaring. Foreign investment is coming in. How resilient do you think that is, especially with some of these, with some of these criticisms from around the world, and growing calls for divestment.

NETANYAHU: In fact, the opposite is happening. We have enormous investment in Israel. By the way, did you take my advice two years ago? You would have made a lot of money.

EISEN: Not me, I just do the interviews.

NETANYAHU: I'm not a stockbroker, and I'm not giving you tips, but I would say buy anything in Israel because Israel is going up. After two and a half years of war, our currency is the strongest it's been in our history. The stock market is soaring, our defense and other technological exports are going through the roof, and people are coming to invest. Nvidia invested here, and they didn't do it because of our blue eyes. I don't have blue eyes, by the way. They didn't do it because of that. They did it because they understand that this is a fountain head, just a tremendous engine of innovation. Here's a, here's something I want your viewers to absorb, this is an amazing fact, okay, the place that has the second country with the most startups, okay, developing startups in the world, not per capita, on an absolute basis—

EISEN: Is Israel?

NETANYAHU: Is Israel. We're 10 million people, so you understand that something amazing is going on here. And what has happened is that I think the war has shown our technological prowess, which is not only true on the battlefield, but true in things like the beepers and other things that you've seen, the pagers—

EISEN: Yes.

NETANYAHU: But it's in many other things, but it's true on the on the civilian battlefield, you know, it's AI, it's quantum, it's robotics, it's all the areas that the deep tech that is changing the world. Israel is, has enormous talents here, and that's why the companies I mentioned, Nvidia, and all the tech giants are here giving us a strong competition. By the way, that is when the government wants to get these high-tech people. Yeah, it's fine. I like competition, but they're here because of this, and so Israel is at the forefront. Now, I'll give you an example where the same thing is going to happen now in AI and quantum and other areas has happened in cyber. 10 years ago, I said that Israel will be among the top five five cyber powers in the world. I was wrong. It's now number two in terms of investments in cyber, Israel, tiny Israel is number two, because—

EISEN: Because you need it.

NETANYAHU: Tiny, because we develop it, because we develop the technology, that the battlefield technology, which is, you know, the exports of zoning, you know, it's developed. It's like no other country. It's developing with these reserve soldiers and officers who come back to their startups after military service, and they take their battle experience to create battle-tested technologies, and that's the world understands that, the markets are not wrong. Yes, they understand all the vilifications, they understand that government's—

EISEN: Threats, divestments—

NETANYAHU: Yeah, they understand, but they invest because they go, you know, where the money is, it's like what is it, why do you go—

EISEN: Follow the money.

NETANYAHU: You go because that's where the money is. In Israel, there's that's where the innovation is. There's tremendous innovation in Israel.

EISEN: What about the election? You're facing an election in a few months, and polls indicate that you are likely to win. You've been in power now cumulatively, I think, more than 18 years. When do you think this country will be ready for new leadership?

NETANYAHU: Anytime the people decide, and anytime, as far as I'm concerned, anytime the people decide otherwise, or I decide that I have nothing to do, but there's there are three things we want to do. A, finish the security envelope that we have to make vis-a-vis Iran and its proxies, and I think we're well underway. Number two, seize the future, just the way, you know I transformed, helped, I really led the Israeli transformation from a semi-socialist economy to a free-market economy when I was both Prime Minister and Finance Minister. I see the same opportunity today with deep tech. I see it particularly in these AI, quantum-driven things that change everything here, and it creates the opportunity to do something else, the third thing, which is growing peace with countries in and around the Middle East. At the moment, these, these contacts—

EISEN: Is that realistic?  

NETANYAHU: Yeah, well, we've had, you know—

EISEN: Beyond the initial phase of the Abraham Accords.

NETANYAHU: You know, I'm not going to give the details, but you know, we had the Abraham Accords, which shocked everyone. How did we make President Trump and I all of a sudden, out of, you know, in four weeks, we had peace treaties with four Arab nations. How did that happen? Well, it happened because the geopolitical balance has changed. Same thing is happening now because of the war and because of the rise of these new technologies, which Israel excels in, we have countries in and around the Middle East and far away from the Middle East who are coming to us and saying we want to partner with you, and I want to partner with them, and the other thing I want to do is move away in America from aid to partnership.

EISEN: You've said this, yeah.

NETANYAHU: Well, we're now working on a memorandum of understanding, which will bring down—

EISEN: Is it going to come sooner than you expect, the midterms, they're so—

NETANYAHU: I wanted to start now.

EISEN: Now?

NETANYAHU: I wanted to start now. I wanted to start in the last two years of the Trump administration, and I wanted to keep going down, coming to zero, because I think, you know, I think we've come of age. Israel has a robust economy, and I want us to go from aid to a partnership where we both invest equal amounts and both share equally in the fruits of our genius innovators and technologists, and I think that's very, very important. It will also take away the myth that Israel, you know, is depleting America's coffers—

EISEN: The critics say it's the welfare—

NETANYAHU: No, it's not.

EISEN: Of the United States.

NETANYAHU: Look, one of the, I don't know if I quoted this last time, but one of our, one of the senators in the American senate said, if we had in Israel instead of in Afghanistan, we wouldn't have had to spend a trillion dollars, you know, we would spend a fraction of a fraction of that, which is, you know, a few, a few billion dollars a year, but I said we don't need that either. I mean, we appreciate it, I appreciate every amount of help that America has given us over the years, but I think just as we moved away from financial aid, economic aid, we can move away now from military and move to a partnership, and that's going to happen. And the last thing I'll tell you is this, you know, I talked to the rating agencies before the war, so I said, you know, how come you're not rating Israel with a A plus, plus, plus, you know, it's the other place where you have this innovation bulldozer, you know, that is changing the world. What powerhouse. They said, well, it's geopolitical risk. Two and a half years after everything that you hear, everything, look at what the markets are saying. They've reduced the geopolitical risk. It was, I think, about 75% on this, this ladder that they have, and it's now down to 50%. Why is that? Because we deliver these immense blows to Iran, Iran, and the terror axis, and Israel is so, so much stronger, and they're so much weaker. So I'm saying basically to yours, come and invest in Israel. It's a good deal. What I said to you two years ago—

EISEN: You said it two years ago—

NETANYAHU: You're not, you know, it's not, you're not joining the elevator at the ground floor because it's rising, but it's got a lot more to rise, a lot more to go. And so that's my message to your viewers. Viewers, why am I looking in the camera? Come in—

EISEN: We got it.

NETANYAHU: Come and invest in Israel, it will be very good for your business.

EISEN: Well, Prime Minister, thank you very much for taking the time. Know you have a lot going on right now. Let you get back to it, but we appreciate hearing from you.

NETANYAHU: Thank you. Good to see you.

EISEN: Good to see you again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Carl, back over to you.