What happened was that the Iranians have been firing missiles at the old city of Jerusalem, where you have the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest places for Islam; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest places for Christianity; and the Western Wall, which is the holiest place for Judaism—and the fragments nearly hit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

So as a result, the Israeli security authorities said, okay, let's take out the worshippers right now because they'd be hurt. There's no protection there. And that was a general instruction that applied to the Jewish places, to the Muslim places, and to the Christian places.

And that was the reason that a police officer on duty said, "Oh, okay, I'm applying it also to the Patriarch." Now, look, I think that was—I can understand the concern for his safety, and that was the only concern.

There was no malice here, no bad intention, unlike the press reports.

But nevertheless, I said, despite this concern, I gave an instruction immediately. He should be free, the Patriarch, to come with his party and perform services as he wishes. There's a risk there, and we're trying to minimize it.

Our policy has been absolutely pro-Christian — the complete opposite of the slander that is being foisted at us.

Look at the Middle East, and you see in every country, the Christians are shrinking. Their numbers are shrinking, they're oppressed, they're in very bad shape. Many of them leave.

Israel is the only place where the Christian population has grown.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East, and one of the few countries in the world that stands up for Christians.

We protect them, because that's the way we should treat all human beings, but especially our Christian friends.

They tried to kill President Trump twice and they’re still trying to kill him.

I don’t hear North Korea chanting “Death to America.” I don’t hear China or Russia chanting it either.

These are all adversarial countries, but they’re not seized by fanaticism, but Iran is.

Many European countries have shown remarkable weakness in the face of a regime that says America is the “Great Satan,” Israel is the “small Satan,” and Europe is sort of the "middle-sized Satan" in between — a civilization that must also be crushed.

There are military solutions to the Strait of Hormuz that the United States is leading, and I won't get into that.

Post-war, there are things that I hear from the Arab countries and from the United States as well:

And I think these are interesting ideas — to divert all the energy pipelines, oil and gas, from the Gulf, where the Iranians have a geographic choke point, westward across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea and up to the Mediterranean ports, our ports in Israel.

And therefore, you just get around the geographic choke point.

Iran is attacking the Gulf states to put pressure on America to stop the attacks on them and give them the freedom to develop their nuclear weapons.

But I think it's a boomerang because many of the Gulf states, in fact, say, "Oh, we shouldn't succumb to this blackmail, because we'll be in a much worse place when they develop nuclear weapons and the other weapons that they want, because that'll be the end of the Gulf states."

The Gulf States are actually encouraging the United States to accelerate its action against Iran in order to prevent them from having these choke points.