Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s war against Iran as a historic success on Monday, vowing that Tehran would never obtain a nuclear weapon “with an agreement or without an agreement,” while pointedly declining to criticize the emerging US-Iran deal that brought the fighting to a close.

Speaking at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem in his first press conference to take reporters’ questions in three months, Netanyahu sought to frame the campaign as a victory even as he faces mounting domestic criticism, including from inside his own government, over the war’s apparent end on terms set largely by Washington.

The remarks came a day after the United States and Iran reached a memorandum of understanding to halt the war, which US officials said was digitally signed Sunday by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. A formal signing is planned for Friday in Switzerland. The agreement is said to also cover the fighting in Lebanon and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Netanyahu told reporters that Israel does not yet know the terms of the accord, and he repeatedly stressed that he was “not limiting” himself in acting to keep Iran from a bomb or in preserving Israel’s freedom to operate against Hezbollah. Preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, he said, remained his “life’s mission.” He added that the threat would not materialize “not today and not tomorrow,” and not as long as he is prime minister.

Recounting what he called the largest strike operation in Israel’s history, Netanyahu said Israel and the United States had eliminated the leadership of the Iranian regime, killed its nuclear scientists, destroyed nuclear facilities and the bulk of its missile production, and crippled its navy and air force. He estimated the damage to Iran’s economy in the hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly approaching a trillion. Israel, he said, had been saved from annihilation.

The prime minister cautioned that the campaign was “not over,” saying Israel would continue to confront Iran’s proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the West Bank, and would remain in the security zones it has established beyond its borders “for as long as necessary.” He announced an additional 350 billion shekels for the defense budget, pledging to develop new technologies and build fresh regional alliances.

Pressed on whether the framework resembled the 2015 nuclear deal struck under President Barack Obama, which he spent years opposing, Netanyahu replied that he would not make that comparison. He described his ties with Trump as a “relationship of partners,” while acknowledging that the two men do not always see eye to eye and that Israel’s security interests must be defended wisely.

Netanyahu said the war’s central goals had been achieved and maintained that regime change in Tehran had never been an objective, though he noted there were “cracks” in the Iranian leadership’s hold on power. He also confirmed that he intends to run in Israel’s upcoming elections.

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