“We are prepared for any scenario – both offensively and defensively,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

Iran has threatened to respond after Hamas terror group leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday, a day after senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed in Beirut.

Israel has claimed responsibility for killing Shukr, but has not officially commented on Haniyeh, whose death has been blamed on the Jewish state by Hamas, Iran, and their allies. Israel has pledged to kill the Hamas masterminds behind the terror group’s devastating October 7 attack, which sparked the war in Gaza.

“The State of Israel is in a multi-front war against Iran’s axis of evil,” Netanyahu said. “We are striking every one of its arms with great force.”

“I reiterate and tell our enemies: We will respond and we will exact a heavy price for any act of aggression against us, from whatever quarter,” Netanyahu declared.

Israel’s security establishment is on high alert for an Iranian response that it reportedly anticipates could come on multiple fronts.

Hours after Netanyahu’s comments, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel is “prepared very strongly” and ready to respond quickly to any attack.

“We are prepared very strongly in defense, on land, and in the air, and we are ready to move quickly to attack or to respond,” he said during a visit to the IDF’s Ground Technological Division. “We will exact a price from the enemy, as we have been doing in recent days. If it dares to attack us, it will pay a heavy price.”

During the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also pushed back against media reports over his handling of the ongoing hostage crisis in the Gaza Strip amid the war there against the Palestinian terror group Hamas. War erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a devastating attack on Israel during which terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza. Israel responded with an offensive to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, of whom 111 remain in captivity, 39 of whom the IDF has confirmed are dead.

The US has helped mediate talks for a ceasefire and hostage release but on Saturday Channel 12 reported that US President Joe Biden harshly criticized Netanyahu over hostage talks. Those talks have been ongoing for many months without results, and Biden has previously opined that Netanyahu has been intentionally stalling for internal political reasons.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Biden had said during the call that the Wednesday assassination of Haniyeh in Iran was “poorly timed,” coming “right at what the Americans hoped would be the endgame” of talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Anonymous security officials have also claimed that Israel’s security chiefs have directly challenged Netanyahu over the handling of a potential deal, even accusing him of deliberately sabotaging a potential hostage-ceasefire agreement. In his remarks Sunday, Netanyahu denied those claims and slammed the leaks.

“I am prepared to go very far to release all of our hostages while maintaining the security of Israel,” Netanyahu told ministers at the cabinet meeting. “Our commitment stands in complete contrast to the leaks and mendacious briefings on the issue of our hostages.”

“These briefings harm the negotiations and, to my great regret, they also mislead the hostages’ dear families. They create a false impression that Hamas has agreed to a deal, while the government of Israel is opposed to it.”

“The complete opposite is true,” he said. “The simple truth is, that as of now Hamas has not agreed to the most basic conditions of the outline.”

Eisenkot: PM playing into the hands of Sinwar, Iran

Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF Chief of Staff, a member of the National Unity party and until recently an observer in the now defunct war cabinet, denounced Netanyahu’s handling of the hostage talks and the wider crisis, asserting that the prime minister’s far-right coalition partners Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir were setting the tone. “I can see the pattern — that the less you served [in the military] and contributed, the more you rabble rouse and want to boot out everyone and fight the entire Middle East,” he said of the ministerial duo.

Recent assassinations of terror chiefs “are a great success, operationally and by those who took the decisions,” he said in an Israel Radio interview on Sunday, “but that doesn’t change the wider picture: The strategy that [Netanyahu] is leading serves the vision of [Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya] Sinwar, who wanted to see attrition and regional escalation, and the long-term Iranian strategy of wearing down Israel until its collapse.” The National Unity party quit the emergency war coalition in June.

The day after the Hamas October 7 attack, Iran-backed Hezbollah began attacking along Israel’s northern border saying it was acting in support of Gaza. Amid near-daily attacks by Hezbollah, the IDF has struck back amid concerns that the conflict could boil over into another front. The killing of Haniyeh and Shukr and vows of revenge by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas have pushed those concerns even higher.

Iran has already launched a direct attack on Israel in April following the killing of two senior Iranian generals in a strike on Damascus that Tehran blamed on Israel. The Iranian attack was thwarted by Israeli air defense in cooperation with US-coordinated regional forces. The US is reportedly trying to again build the alliance to fend off the expected Iranian attack.