Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran spared his country from what he described as the Islamic republic’s threat of “nuclear annihilation”, AFP reports.

“The most important thing is that we saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear annihilation,” Netanyahu says, in what were his first comments after Washington and Tehran agreed to a deal to end the Middle East war.

“And what would that mean? It would mean that millions of Israeli citizens — you who are hearing me now — all of you would have been in terrible danger of mass death … And we have pushed away from us, for years, this danger of the annihilation of Israel’s population,” Netanyahu adds in a televised press conference.