Clinton Says Netanyahu Believed Strikes on Iran Could Spark an Uprising

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believed a strike on Iran’s leadership and a broad bombing of its military infrastructure could trigger regime collapse and a popular uprising.

Speaking with New Yorker editor David Remnick onstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Clinton said Netanyahu had been “obsessive,” in her words, about two goals during the time she knew him, Iran and normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia.

She said the issue came up at her first official meeting with Netanyahu, likely in March 2009, shortly after she became secretary of state in the Obama administration. “He was asking, absolutely: how do we get normalization with Saudi Arabia, and how do we completely cut off the head of Iran?” Clinton recalled.

According to Clinton, Netanyahu’s thinking involved two stages, first striking the top of the Iranian regime on the assumption the system would collapse, then bombing essential infrastructure and paralyzing military power in the hope that Iranians would seize the moment and revolt. She said this approach also shaped Netanyahu’s dealings with President Donald Trump. The Obama administration, she said, rejected the idea entirely: “That just was not our read on what was going to happen.”