Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and Security Cabinet member, said Trump’s inauguration next month offers Israel a chance to pursue some strategic goals, including overthrowing the Iranian government, preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, and stopping the rebuilding of Lebanese villages along Israel’s border.
“We need to deal with the octopus head and eliminate the Iranian regime,” Smotrich said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We must join hands on this with the new Trump administration. The Western world cannot afford a dictatorial regime with nuclear weapons which threatens to destroy it.”
It is not clear whether Trump would support such a move, especially if it entailed US military action. Despite his strong pro-Israel stand and the face that the tightened sanctions against Tehran during his first term, his close advisors have said that he won’t seek to overthrow the Iranian government and will avoid another Middle Eastern war.
Smotrich also said the fall of the Assad regime in Syria should inspire the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government. “I say to the Iranians ‘break the barrier of fear,’ otherwise Israel will have no choice but to squash the Iranian economy, including the oil and energy facilities.”
On Israel’s $525-billion economy, Smotrich said that despite the ongoing war, Israel’s economy remains strong, beyond expectations. He rejected other projections that 2025 won’t reflect a robust rebound.
In his position overseeing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Smotrich said the incoming Trump administration “understands the obligation to ensure the future existence of Israel” and that involves scrapping the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.
Trump himself hasn’t spoken about this recently, but he said that a Palestinian state “is not in the cards even as part of a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. If that’s a deal breaker, the deal will sink.”
Saudi Arabia and Israel were close to a US-led agreement before the war in Gaza, but now the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said he won’t recognize Israel unless it takes steps toward accepting Palestinian statehood.
On a ceasefire in Gaza, Smotrich, like Netanyahu, said Israel shouldn’t allow the Palestinian Authority to take control of any part of Gaza once fighting ends, which they agree, won’t happen until Israel has destroyed Hamas.
Smotrich claims that even then, “Israel will stay in Gaza for as long as needed, to assure its security.”
On the ceasefire in Lebanon, Smotrich said Israel will strive to convince its allies to ban the rebuilding of destroyed houses in Lebanese villages along the border, “we destroyed those houses so that Hezbollah can’t rebuild its military infrastructure. Any structure used to conceal a tunnel shaft, a bunker or a missile is considered military infrastructure.”
Smotrich last week submitted the 2025 budget to Parliament for final approval. “It’s important to me that our partners, investors in Israel and abroad, know our hands are firmly on the wheel,” he said.
Many outside are skeptical. The International Monetary Fund, in addition to banks and rating agencies, project a higher deficit in the coming year and a much lower growth projection than that of the finance ministry’s. “They are misreading the Israeli economy,” insisted Smotrich. He noted that the shekel has strengthened by around 8% against the dollar as of Friday since the war started, making it one of the best currency performers, in comparison to others tracked by Bloomberg. “The economy’s working much better than might have been expected,” he argued.
He said that the 160,000 Palestinian workers in Israel banned after the Hamas attack wouldn’t be returning, even though the economy needs such workers, making some skeptical of a very strong rebound. “It will be a difficult year or two but eventually the construction sector will emerge with better building technologies and productivity,” he said.