Netanyahu's 60 Minutes interview with Major Garrett: full timeline, controversies and what was actually said

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down on Saturday with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett for a 60 Minutes interview that aired on Sunday, May 10, 2026. It was Netanyahu's first U.S. television interview since the U.S.-Israel-Iran war began on February 28, 2026 — a conflict now in its eleventh week — and Garrett's opening framing made the stakes explicit: a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran "was tested again today by suspected Iranian drone strikes in the Persian Gulf," with continuing hostilities "complicating White House efforts to close a deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stabilize energy prices." Newsorga's read of the entire transcript is that Netanyahu, on his own description, was "careful with his words," but said enough on six discrete questions to produce as many separate next-day controversies.

Below is the timeline-ordered breakdown of the questions and answers that mattered, with each exchange grouped by the topic Garrett opened it on. Direct quotations are verbatim from the 60 Minutes transcript released by CBS News; the contextual figures (Pew, casualty totals, the $3.8 billion aid programme) are as Garrett or the CBS framing cited them on air.

Q1 — 'Is the war with Iran over? And if it isn't, who will decide when it is?'

Netanyahu's answer: "I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over, because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran. There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now, we've degraded a lot of it. But all that is still there, and there's work to be done." The four-part list — enriched uranium, enrichment sites, proxy networks, ballistic-missile production — is the prime minister's public terms for the ceasefire, and it is the most explicit articulation he has given to a U.S. audience of what "end of the war" means in Israeli terms.

Q2 — 'How do you envision the highly enriched uranium will be removed?'

Netanyahu, the now-most-clipped line of the entire interview: "You go in, and you take it out." When Garrett pressed — "With what? Special Forces from Israel, Special Forces from the United States?" — Netanyahu confirmed a direct quote from the President of the United States he had not previously made public on a U.S. broadcast: "What President Trump has said to me, 'I want to go in there.' And I think it can be done physically. That's not the problem. If you have an agreement, and you go in, and you take it out, why not? That's the best way." He then declined to commit to force without an agreement and refused to give a timetable: "I'm gonna dodge them. Because I'm not gonna talk about our military possibilities, plans, or anything of the kind."

Q3 — 'Could the war with Iran end but the war with Hezbollah continue?'

Hours before the recording, Israel had targeted Iran-backed Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Netanyahu's framing of the two fronts as separable: "They should be. What Iran would like to do is to say, 'No, if we achieve a ceasefire here, we want a ceasefire there.'" Garrett pushed: "Even if President Trump asks you to?" Netanyahu: "He understands what I'm saying. We are — we want to get rid of that danger to our communities, to our cities. They rocket our cities all the time." And the broader regional thesis: "If this regime [in Iran] is indeed weakened or possibly toppled, I think it's the end of Hezbollah, it's the end of Hamas, it's probably the end of the Houthis, because the whole scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran built collapses if the regime in Iran collapses."

Q4 — 'Is it possible to topple the Iranian regime?'

Netanyahu: "You can't predict when that happens. Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No." That hedged answer matters because Garrett's next question went directly to a contested New York Times report on a February 11 Situation Room conversation, days before the war began. The Times quote Garrett read aloud: "In the Situation Room on February 11, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic." Netanyahu replied "No. That's actually incorrect," and clarified: "I said 'Oh, well, it's guaranteed we can do it,' [is the part that's wrong]. Not only did I note [the uncertainty]. We both agreed that there was both uncertainty and risk involved. … There's danger in action, in taking action. But there's greater danger in not taking action."

On a second Times line — that Netanyahu had told Trump the Iranian regime would be "so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz" — Netanyahu offered a partial concession: "I don't think we could quantify it exactly, but the problem of the Hormuz Straits was understood as the fighting went on." Garrett: "It became understood?" Netanyahu: "It became understood." That exchange is the first on-record acknowledgement by the prime minister that the Hormuz chokepoint risk was underestimated in the pre-war planning conversation in Washington.

Q5 — 'Arab states: alliances expanded or jeopardised?'

Netanyahu's claim: "I now see the possibility of the expansion and the deepening of the agreements we do have to alliances with Arab states of the kind that we never even dreamed of." When Garrett raised reporting that the Gulf monarchies are anxious about Israeli strategic dominance, Netanyahu said "some" Arab states had told him, in messages "I never heard before," "Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because that in fact deters Iran. Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because we can do amazing things with Israel." He named the cooperation areas — "economic cooperation on energy, on AI, on quantum, the areas where Israel is so strong" — without naming the states.

Q6 — 'What do you know about China providing materially valuable military support to Iran?'

Netanyahu: "China gave a certain amount of support and particular components of missile manufacturing. But I can't say more than that." Garrett: "Does that disturb you?" Netanyahu: "Well, I didn't like it." Garrett: "'Cause it's apparently doing it right now." Netanyahu: "Could be. Could be. I don't want to speak for China. I don't want to speak also for President [Trump] … I also have a closed mouth when necessary." The interview taping coincided with a planned Xi Jinping–Donald Trump summit later in the week, which CBS framed in the broadcast's set-up; China is the world's largest importer of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

Q7 — 'Time for the state of Israel to reexamine its financial relationship to the United States?'

The single most consequential domestic-Israeli announcement of the interview. Netanyahu, with full deliberation: "Absolutely. And I've said this to President Trump. I've said it to our own people. Their jaws drop, but I said, 'Look.' … I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have. Because we receive $3.8 billion a year. And I think that it's time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support." Garrett: "Can you give me a timetable?" Netanyahu: "I said, let's start now and do it over the next decade, over the next ten years, but I want to start now. I don't want to wait for the next Congress. I want to start now."

Newsorga reads three audiences for that line. First, U.S. fiscal conservatives who have been challenging the Israel aid line item — Netanyahu's offer to initiate the wind-down preempts a tougher cut imposed on Israel by a future U.S. Congress. Second, Israeli domestic politics — the prime minister is signalling fiscal independence as a sovereignty argument inside a fractious coalition. Third, Gulf and Arab partners he says are deepening ties: a smaller U.S. financial dependency makes Israel a more usable security partner for sovereign actors who do not want to be seen routing capability through Washington.

Q8 — 'Israel's reputational decline'

Garrett framed the moment with hard polling: "According to a recent Pew survey, 60% of U.S. adults reported having an unfavorable view of Israel, up nearly 20 points in four years." And he tied the question to the Gaza casualty figure publicly attributed to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry — "more than 70,000 people have been killed. That includes civilians as well as Hamas terrorists." (Newsorga reports those figures as Garrett cited them in the 60 Minutes script; this article does not independently verify the Health Ministry's count.)

Netanyahu's reply pinned the decline almost entirely on social media. "This is yours, right?" he asked, holding up Garrett's phone. "You can penetrate this little instrument. And you can say about Major Garrett anything you want. And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it." He framed the platform as "the eighth front of the war" and said the slide in U.S. support "correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media. … We have several countries that basically manipulated social media. And they do it in a clever way. And that's something that has hurt us badly." He stopped short of advocating censorship: "I don't believe in censoring them or anything."

Garrett's follow-up was the direct one: "Is it your belief, Mr. Prime Minister, that nothing that Israel has done tactically or strategically has made no mistakes either in Gaza or the West Bank?" Netanyahu: "No, of course not. Look, it's war. And in war, armies sometimes miss and civilians die. And these are mistakes, these are not deliberate things that happen. Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we've not done well on the propaganda war."

Q9 — 'The ICC has accused you of war crimes. Now what?'

Neither Israel nor the United States recognises the International Criminal Court, and Netanyahu did not engage the court directly. Instead he restated his Gaza end-state: "Somebody has to disarm them. Somebody has to then demilitarize Gaza. I would say, disarm, demilitarize, deradicalize, because you don't want these fanatics there." Garrett: "Is that Israel's obligation? Or the international community's, through the Board of Peace?" Netanyahu: "Major, find me the countries who would do it. If it comes down to us, then we'll have to do it, but we'll choose the time and the circumstances in which to do it, because we've got a few other things. But we are not going to let Hamas ever threaten Israel again."

Q10 — 'A hunger for conflict?'

Garrett, near the end: "There is an impression about you that is a hunger that people perceive in you for conflict." Netanyahu's reply pulled the time-horizon back: "That's funny, because for years, I was considered, before the October 7th, perhaps the most restrained prime minister in Israel's history. I was conceived as being politically tough but militarily very restrained. Obviously, it changed on October 7th, because they were going to annihilate us. I didn't think it was just an attack by Hamas. I saw it as it was, an attack by the Iran axis to try to annihilate us through a noose of death."

What the interview did not settle

The interview did not resolve the underlying ICC legal question, did not produce a public timetable for the Iranian uranium removal Netanyahu nonetheless said had to happen, did not commit Israel to any post-conflict governance model for Gaza beyond the "disarm, demilitarize, deradicalize" triad, and did not close the Hezbollah front. On the factual side, two things changed on the public record. First, the Hormuz chokepoint risk was publicly acknowledged by Netanyahu as having been understood during the fighting rather than fully foreseen before it — which matters for any forensic accounting of what was said in the February 11 Situation Room. Second, the $3.8 billion aid figure is now, on Netanyahu's own statement of intent, on a publicly-announced ten-year glide path to zero.

Why the interview lands as a set of overlapping controversies

(a) The 'You go in and you take it out' line on Iranian uranium is the U.S.-broadcast confirmation of an active Trump-administration intent to use force at Iranian enrichment sites, and it is therefore the operative line Iranian foreign-ministry briefings will respond to this week. (b) The Times pushback is partial: Netanyahu accepts he and Trump did agree on uncertainty and risk, while disputing only the characterisation of his pre-war optimism. (c) The $3.8 billion zero line invites a parallel debate in Washington about whether bilateral defence cooperation survives independent of the financial component. (d) The social-media 'eighth front' framing is a defensive frame on 70,000 Gaza deaths and on a 20-point Pew slide that has eaten into Republican and Democrat ratings of Israel alike. (e) The 'hunger for conflict' rebuttal repositions Netanyahu's pre-October 7 record into the same political conversation about whether the post-October 7 turn is reactive or strategic.

And (f) there is the meta-controversy the choice of forum itself raises. 60 Minutes' audience skews older, U.S.-mainland, and consequential for Senate politics. Selecting Major Garrett — a former White House and Capitol Hill correspondent now CBS News' chief Washington reporter — rather than a Tel Aviv-based interviewer means the answers were framed for an American legislative audience as much as an international news one. That choice is consistent with the substance of what Netanyahu offered on aid: the message that Israel is preparing to be financially self-sufficient is the kind of message that travels furthest in a chamber that holds the U.S. fiscal year.

The producer note — and what to watch next

CBS News credited the piece to producers Arden Farhi, Andy Court, Marc Lieberman and Erin Lyall, with Michal Ben-Gal as field producer, associate producers Jane Greeley, Meghan Lisson, Cassidy McDonald and Georgia Rosenberg, edited by Peter M. Berman and Warren Lustig with assistant editor Aisha Crespo — a standard senior-team allocation for a sitting head of government interview. The next data points to watch for the rest of the week: any Iranian foreign-ministry response to the "You go in and you take it out" formulation; whether Xi Jinping's summit with Trump produces a Chinese statement on the missile-components claim Netanyahu would not pursue; any U.S. Senate appropriations move on the $3.8 billion glide-path; and whether Hezbollah's Lebanon front sees a separate ceasefire conversation in Beirut or a continued widening of operations after Saturday's pre-interview Israeli strike.