Fox’s Bret Baier Confronts Netanyahu on Claim Iran Was Close to Building a Nuke: ‘Was U.S. Intel Wrong?’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his country’s escalating military campaign against Iran during an exchange with Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Sunday, insisting that Israel was facing an imminent nuclear threat.

Baier confronted Netanyahu after he said Israel launched the strikes to stop Iran from rapidly advancing its nuclear weapons program and massively expanding its ballistic missile arsenal.

The Fox News anchor asked, “First of all, let me start at the beginning. Why did you launch this operation?”

Netanyahu replied, “Because we were facing an imminent threat, a dual existential threat, one, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal into the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year, new weapons within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each one weighing a ton.”

Netanyahu continued:

So we had to act. It was the 12th hour. We did act to save ourselves, but also, I think, to not only protect ourselves but protect the world from this incendiary regime. We can’t have the world’s most dangerous regime have the world most dangerous weapons. We’re protecting ourselves. But by doing so, we’re protecting many others.

Baier challenged Netanyahu on his claim Iran was close to a nuclear warhead.

“You know, I just want to press you on the intel on the nuclear part,” he said. “Less than two months ago, the new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Capitol Hill saying that everything had been suspended since 2003 and had not restarted, that the nuclear program had not been restarted by the Iranians. So did something change from end of March until this week? Was the U.S. Intel wrong?”

Netanyahu stopped short of criticizing US intelligence but claimed his country’s agencies had assessed the situation differently.

“The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, was absolutely clear that they were working on a secret plan to weaponize the uranium,” Netanyahu said. “They were marching very quickly. They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months, and certainly less than a year.”

Watch above via Fox News.