Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has declared that Israel is preparing to renew its military campaign against Iran and awaits only a “green light” from the United States to launch the operation.
Katz stated that the attack would target the Khamenei dynasty, aiming to “erase” it and send Iran back to an “age of darkness and stone.” His remarks echo U.S. President Donald Trump’s April 1 pledge to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”
The threat emerged after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced a visit to Islamabad for peace talks with the United States, which have been failing to achieve progress.
Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Joe Kent noted that Katz’s comments reveal Israel’s efforts to compel the United States to continue military actions against Iran. Days earlier, the State Department confirmed what Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously admitted: The United States entered the conflict at Israel’s request.
Trump had warned on April 1 that “we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” and later stated that “a whole civilization will die tonight.”
The U.S. government has now released a legal analysis authored by its legal advisor, Reed Rubenstein, which confirms that military operations against Iran began at Israel’s request. The document states that such actions have been ongoing since 1979, the founding of Iran’s Islamic Republic.
According to the analysis, “the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally.” It further asserts that operations launched in late February are part of an armed conflict with Iran that has persisted for years—“at the very least since June 2025.”
The document concludes that under international law, the conflict did not end in the interim.
