War With Iran Could End "Faster Than People Think": Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he believed the war in Iran could finish sooner than "people think".

"I also see this war ending a lot faster than people think," Netanyahu said at a press conference.

Here are the key takeaways from Netanyahu's press conference

War's end?

"I'm not sure who's running Iran right now. Mojtaba, the replacement ayatollah, has not shown his face... What we see is that there is a lot of tensions inside the people who are edging for the top.

"We're seeing cracks, and we're trying to propagate them as fast as we can, not only in the top command, we're seeing cracks in the field."

"Winning"

Netanyahu said "we are winning and Iran is being decimated," adding that it was no longer able to enrich uranium or to build ballistic missiles.

Netanyahu also denied that Israel "dragged" the US into the war. "Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?"

Israel "acted alone"

Netanyahu said Israel acted on its own when it struck an Iranian gas field, which sparked a retaliatory strike by Tehran on Qatar's main gas hub.

"Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound... President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks and we're holding out."

Earlier US President Donald Trump said that he told Israel not to carry out any more such strikes. "I told him, don't do that, and he won't do that," Trump told reporters.

 Hormuz "blackmail"

Netanyahu said that attempts to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz would fail. "The death cult in Iran is trying to blackmail the world by closing a key international maritime route, the Strait of Hormuz. It won't work."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)