In 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu already harbored some extremely strong convictions on how to deal with both Iran and Iraq. Back then, his opinions on how to handle the particular challenges each presented were quite divergent. On the one hand, he suggested beaming "reruns of Melrose Place" into Tehran, as a way of inspiring a popular uprising. In contrast, he suggested such an approach could never work in Iraq, and instead advocated for his preferred solution: violence.

Naturally, he believed that a violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be a great thing. Specifically predicting that:

If you take out Saddam's Regime, I guarantee you, that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.