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Israel's military has no plans of deliberately prolonging its attacks on Iran as it bared that its next operations against the Islamic Republic are already in place.

Ben Cohen, deputy spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told Manila Bulletin "nobody wants a long war," but stressed that Israel must first remove its existential threat from Iran before stopping its attacks. (Joseph Pedrajas | MB)

READ: https://mb.com.ph/2026/03/13/israel-military-says-no-plan-of-prolonging-war-with-iran-but-goal-must-be-achieved

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Transcript
00:01Iran's former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was already killed, but now there's already a new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Manchitaba Khamenei.
00:09So, and Tehran showed no sign of stopping or yielding.
00:13What now is your goal? I mean, and how easy or hard is it achieving your goal?
00:20Look, war is never easy.
00:21I will say we've made a very significant progress over the last week and a half together with our partners
00:26in the United States.
00:27And that goal, as I described it earlier, is very clear.
00:30It's to take that ticking time bomb and to make sure that it's not there.
00:34And the way we're doing that is by taking away military capabilities.
00:37So the first 100 hours of the operation were the first stage where we take that attack,
00:43not only eliminating Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, but also 40 other senior military commanders in the opening minutes.
00:48And over the first five days, we operated on a few different fronts.
00:51We created aerial superiority for the United States and Israel and Iranian skies,
00:56by taking away aerial defense capabilities, radars, land-to-air missiles, so on and so forth.
01:03And the other thing that we did over those first 100 hours is to target their ballistic missile array
01:08and their command and control centers.
01:09Once we finished that first strike, now what we have to do is deepen the deterioration of their military capabilities.
01:16So how are we doing that?
01:17We're striking in Tehran almost every day, command and control capabilities.
01:21We're striking weapons manufacturing capabilities that they're using to build up those ballistic missiles.
01:27We continue to hunt down those ballistic missile capabilities, whether it be launchers, operatives, so on and so forth.
01:32And we're continuing to strike other infrastructure in the, you know, the Iranian regime has a very large military network.
01:38And they have multiple armies.
01:40They have, you know, an Air Force, a Navy.
01:42And what we're doing is we're systematically taking away from those military capabilities so that, you know,
01:47a year down the line, two years down the line, even if they try to build themselves back up,
01:51they won't be the same strategic threat that they are now.
01:55President Trump recently said that war could be ended anytime soon.
01:58Does the Israeli military share the same pronouncement?
02:03So, look, nobody wants long wars, right?
02:06You know, everyone wants to protect our civilians and to do it in minimum time.
02:10The Iranian terrorist regime has a lot of military capabilities.
02:13We work in very close coordination with our partners in the United States as it pertains in general
02:18and as it pertains specifically to this operation.
02:20You know, we're lockstep.
02:21We're talking every day.
02:22We're coordinating our targets.
02:23We're coordinating where we're striking.
02:25And we're going to keep doing that moving forward.
02:27I can't speak to a specific time frame, but I can tell you that we're going to go
02:31as long as it takes to get the job done.
02:34So, what more do we expect from Israel or maybe from the U.S. in the coming days or weeks?
02:40So, we're going to continue operating against those same military capabilities that I spoke about, right?
02:46So, I won't reveal exactly what we're going to do.
02:48You know, I don't want to reveal any future plans to the enemy.
02:50But I can tell you that we have a concrete plan that's to take away those military capabilities.
02:55You know, not just, you know, firing everywhere, but knowing exactly where we're targeting,
02:59what we're striking and how we're striking to slowly deteriorate or, you know, quickly as possible
03:04deteriorate, better said, their military capabilities.
03:06And we're going to keep doing that over the coming days.
03:08You know, us, where we're doing it and the United States Armed Forces, where they're doing it
03:12in order to know that that loaded gun isn't pointed to our head anymore.
03:16Okay.
03:16So, that being said, in the view of the Israeli military, how soon can you achieve that?
03:24So, again, I'm not going to give any specific time frame.
03:27You know, nobody here wants long wars.
03:29That's not our goal.
03:30Our goal is to take that military capability and remove it.
03:34And we'll go for as long as it takes to do that.
03:36Okay.
03:37So, one last question.
03:38Do you have any message for those, especially you are, you, you belong to the Israeli military,
03:45you're the spokesperson.
03:46So, do you have any message for those people, for civilian population, for those who are
03:51really concerned about the spillover of the war?
03:55So, I'll make one thing very clear.
03:58The IDF, and I know the same can be said for the United States Armed Forces, do not want
04:02to harm civilians.
04:03Every loss of civilian life is a tragedy.
04:06And we see it that way, you know, within the construct of war.
04:09And we see it that way in general, right?
04:11You know, when the Iranian terrorist regime murdered tens of thousands of civilians just a few
04:14weeks ago for simply exercising their right to protest, you know, we see those civilian
04:19lives lost as a tragedy as well.
04:21We're operating, you know, within the constructs of international law to take away a military
04:26threat, a threat that is not only posed to our people in Israel, but is posed to the entire
04:30region and is posed internally to the people of Iran.
04:34And we're going to keep going until we remove that military threat.
04:37You know, we don't want to see any civilian lives lost.
04:39We're doing our best to remove any threat to civilian lives.
04:42And we're going to keep going as long as it takes.
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