Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a direct and forceful warning to Iran's leadership Tuesday during a speech at the Negev Conference in Dimona, declaring that any future Iranian attack on Israel would be met with a response of an entirely different magnitude than anything seen before.
Addressing Tehran directly, Netanyahu said: "We are prepared for every scenario. I can tell you one thing, and I'll say it to Iran's leaders: don't count on things staying quiet if you attack us. Don't count on a rerun. Because this will not be a rerun, and the last one was powerful enough. This will be a different broadcast, far more powerful. The days are over when someone hits us and we don't hit back twice as hard. We did that to the axis of evil in Iran, and we will keep doing it to anyone who attacks us. That's how we operate."
During the speech, Netanyahu surprised the audience with a thinly veiled disclosure, one instantly recognizable to any Israeli, that he had visited the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona earlier that day, a facility long referred to in coded terms by Israeli politicians and security officials as the "textile factory."
Netanyahu wove the disclosure into remarks about the government's commitment to rebuilding Gaza-border communities devastated in the October 7 massacre, describing his visit to the area near Dimona as tied to the sensitive, classified security work being carried out there under Atomic Energy Commission Director General and Tekuma Directorate head Moshe Edri. "When I met with my wife Sara at Kibbutz Be'eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza last summer, I said in clear words there that we would rebuild the Gaza border region devastated by the terrible October 7 massacre several times over," Netanyahu said. "And that's what we're doing in practice, it's not just words. With the help of the Tekuma Directorate led by our friend Moshe Edri, who is now not far from here, we visited him there, where they make textiles, at the textile factory. He's doing wonderful work there, wonderful work in the Tekuma region."
The term "textile factory," used in reference to the Dimona reactor according to foreign reports, is a long-recognized code dating back to the facility's earliest days, part of Israel's longstanding policy of nuclear ambiguity. The prime minister's disclosure that he visited the site on the same day he issued such direct and forceful threats toward Iran carries a deliberate, multilayered message aimed squarely at decision-makers in Tehran, who understand well both the context and Israel's intent to defend itself using every tool at its disposal.
