Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Monday that Israel struck an Iranian nuclear weapons facility in October, causing damage to important equipment that experts said may be hard for the Islamic Republic to recoup.

“There is a certain component in [Iran’s] nuclear program that was harmed in the strike” on Oct. 26, Netanyahu told the Knesset. 

Still, Netanyahu emphasized that the Iranian nuclear threat remains.

“The plan itself, its ability to act here [against Israel], still has not been thwarted,” he warned. “We delayed it…but it advanced in enrichment. It still has a ways to go in other areas, and the test is on us. It is on us – the government of Israel, the State of Israel, our friend the U.S.” 

Netanyahu said he had conversations on the matter with President Joe Biden — who had expressed his opposition in early October to an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear weapons facilities — and President-elect Donald Trump recently, in which he emphasized that “if we don’t take care of the nuclear program, all the other problems will return and pop up in the axis [of Iranian proxies], in arms, in other areas.”

Israel is “committed” to stopping Iran’s nuclear program, he added.

Among the 20 Iranian military sites struck by Israel in October was the Taleghan 2 facility in Parchin, which was destroyed. The site was used for research that could be used for nuclear weapons but had the plausible deniability of civilian uses, Axios first reported. Taleghan 2 is not a declared nuclear site, preventing Iran from saying its nuclear program was attacked without admitting to a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Taleghan 2 was a nuclear weapons development test location before 2003, as recorded in the nuclear archive the Mossad smuggled out of Iran in 2018. More recently, it stored equipment to make plastic explosives, which could be used in weaponization, the step after breakout in developing a nuclear bomb.

Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted in a recent paper that “the United States and Israel have been concerned about renewed Iranian weaponization research activities” since earlier this year.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, explained on X that in Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear weapons plan, “plastic explosives were…used in the shock wave generator, a multipoint initiator used to set off the main charge of a nuclear weapon.”

“Is this equipment…outside Iran’s ability to make itself or does…Iran have to replace the equipment from abroad?” he asked. “If the latter, Israel’s attack destroyed valuable equipment to nuclear weapons production that is time-consuming to replace.”

Albright said it is possible that Iran still has enough plastic explosives for use in a shock wave generator.

Stricker said it is unclear that this kind of work was the reason for the Taleghan 2 strike, and that other kinds of weaponization work may have been taking place at the site.

“Whatever was destroyed in Taleghan 2,” Albright wrote, “its destruction by Israel sent a signal and a warning to Iran. The Iranian leadership should heed both.”

According to Stricker, “Israel’s willingness to strike Taleghan 2 indicates that more such strikes may be forthcoming, along with covert sabotage efforts, should Iran continue work on nuclear weapons. Tehran’s air defenses were decimated by Israel’s strikes in October, providing Jerusalem with an opportunity to target additional weaponization facilities with limited Iranian interference.”

Netanyahu also mentioned in his speech that Israel destroyed Iran’s Russian-made S-300 air-defense system. 

In April, he said, “one of four S-300 batteries around Tehran was destroyed by us. It did not lead Iran to stop its aggression against us and we got a second attack…this time by 200 ballistic missiles…We detracted from Iran’s air defense abilities. Three batteries around Tehran were destroyed. Other defense batteries were destroyed, as well, and we seriously struck Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities, its ability to produce solid fuel, which is essential to their war plan and their armaments.”

Netanyahu thanked the U.S. and other allies for shooting down Iranian missiles in its first direct attack on Israel in April, but was critical of Biden’s response after that initial action.

“Our friends said to us again ‘there is no need to react.’ ‘Take the win.’ I said, ‘this isn’t a win.’ If you’re attacked and they didn’t manage to kill anyone, thank God, if you sit and don’t react, that certainly is not a victory,” he said.

Netanyahu mentioned several instances in which he disagreed with the Biden administration over the course of the war against Iran’s proxies since last October.

After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, Netanyahu said Israel sought to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities, free the hostages and ensure that Gaza would no longer be a threat to Israel – all of which required a land invasion. 

“The U.S. opposed,” he said. “They didn’t threaten, they didn’t use sanctions, not at that time, but they expressed reservations and suggested that we don’t enter by land. They said ‘it can be taken care of from the air,’ they sent experts. We decided to go according to our view.” 

The Biden administration, the prime minister said, opposed the IDF’s entry into Gaza City, Shifa Hospital, a Hamas command center, Khan Younis and to the densely populated urban center of Rafah.

“Not only did they oppose our going into Rafah, President Biden told me, ‘If you go in, you will be alone,’” Netanyahu said. “He also said he would stop weapons shipments, kinds of weapons that are important to us, and that is what he did.”

“A few days later, Secretary of State [Tony] Blinken came and repeated those things, and I told him, ‘Tony, if we have to, we will fight with our fingernails,’” he added.

Netanyahu said some raised concerns that Israel was dependent on the U.S. and should not enter Rafah, but that in his view, “if we accept these conditions, we will lose all of our independence as a state. We wouldn’t be able to do anything. Any step we want to take, they’ll threaten us with stopping some kind of weapons shipment. That would be impossible. We have to protect Israel’s independence.” 

Still, Netanyahu said that the U.S. helped Israel at the beginning of the war and Biden visited Israel during wartime, which Israelis will never forget.

The prime minister said that the IDF has completed most of its missions in Gaza.

He promised that he “will not give up on one” of the remaining hostages in Gaza, while quoting Biden administration officials including Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and others who have said that Hamas is refusing to negotiate and is to blame for the lack of a hostage deal.

Netanyahu said he has asked the IDF to prepare a plane to “eradicate [Hamas’] governing capacity, which is connected to denying their ability to distribute food and humanitarian aid. We want to ensure the distribution of humanitarian aid without looting by Hamas and others.” 

The prime minister hinted that Israel launched its attack on Hezbollah terrorists via exploding beepers because its plan was in danger of being revealed. He did not update the U.S. because the Biden administration may have opposed or leaked it – “which is the same thing,” he noted. He also said that he ruled out telling the U.S. in advance of the operation to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah for the same reason.

“We surprise our enemies and we preserve our freedom to act. We cooperate when we can with our friend the U.S. I say ‘yes’ when I can, and I say ‘no’ when I need to,” he said.

Hezbollah put “rockets in every garage and living room,” Netanyahu said about southern Lebanon, but the IDF managed to eliminate 70-80% of the Lebanese terrorist organization’s rockets and missiles. Still, he said, thousands remain.

The expansion of the ground operation in Lebanon is “a necessary condition for returning residents to their homes in the north [of Israel],” he added. “We are talking about possible negotiations for an arrangement [to end the war]. The Americans are leading it. I say, it can only happen under fire. It’s happening with a lot of fire.” 

Hezbollah must be pushed north of the Litani River, Netanyahu said, and Israel will demand the ability to prevent Hezbollah attacks even after a cease-fire, including stopping smuggling from Syria.

“We will not allow Hezbollah to go back to its situation on Oct. 6,” he said. 

Netanyahu gave his speech in response to a “40 signatures motion” in the Knesset, which the opposition can submit, requiring a response from the prime minister.