The interview also covered Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Israel’s efforts to thwart them, his new governing coalition with far-right ministers, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and prospects for peace, Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, and the recent violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Despite Ben Gvir’s combative rhetoric ahead of the elections on legalizing Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, he agreed to maintain the status quo there in coalition agreements reached with Netanyahu before the government was sworn in.

The national security minister has long been an advocate of formally altering the Temple Mount status quo, by which Muslims are allowed to pray and enter with few restrictions, and Jews can visit only during limited time slots via a single gate and walk on a predetermined route, closely accompanied by police.

Israel and the United States, Netanyahu said, have been moving “closer together” on the Iranian issue, some eight years after the two countries butted heads over the 2015 US-brokered international agreement aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear advancement in exchange for sanctions relief.

Netanyahu famously clashed with Obama and his administration on that issue and loudly voiced his opposition to the nuclear accord, which US President Joe Biden sought to rejoin after his predecessor Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal in 2018.

On Ukraine, Netanyahu said he was “looking into” providing the country with “other kinds of aid” besides humanitarian help, amid concerns over Israel’s “complex relationship” with Russia and its need to retain “freedom of action” in Syria in its effort to “keep Iran in check.”