Netanyahu reveals he wants American financial support for Israel to 'draw down to zero'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to draw U.S. financial support to his country "down to zero" during an interview on Sunday.

CBS News' Major Garrett asked Netanyahu if he believed it was time for Israel to reset its financial relationship with the United States and the prime minister agreed, saying he even raised the issue with President Donald Trump. 

"Absolutely. And I've said this to President Trump," Netanyahu said. "I've said it in — to our own people." 

He told CBS it was time for his country to wean itself off both the financial and military support from the U.S.

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"I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have," Netanyahu said. "Because we receive $3.8 billion a year. And I think that it's time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support." 

When pressed about a timeline for when this could occur, he said over the next decade.

"I said, let's start now and do it over the next decade, over the next 10 years, but I want to start now," the Israeli leader said. "I don't want to wait for the next Congress. I want to start now." 

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Netanyahu argued that the dramatic shift in public opinion in his country could be traced to the rise in social media.

"Israel has gone to unbelievable lengths to get innocent civilians out of harm's way," he said. "We text message millions of text messages to them—make millions of phone calls to them, pamphlets, leaflets, you name it, OK? We have seen the deterioration of the support for Israel in the United States almost — I would say, it correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media."

"And that, by itself, is not what caused it," Netanyahu continued. "And I don't believe in, you know, in censoring them or anything. But I'll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media. And they do it in a clever way. And that's something that has hurt us badly."

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When asked about the war in Iran, he told "60 Minutes" that a lot had been accomplished, but said there was a lot more to be done.

"I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over, because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran," Netanyahu said. "There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce."

"Now, we've degraded a lot of it, but all that is still there, and there's work to be done," he added.