Dhaka, March 20 -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he believes pipelines should be built to transport Middle East oil and gas across the Arabian Peninsula and up to Israeli ports to avoid threats by Iran in the Hormuz Strait and other Gulf waters.

A day after Israel attacked Iran's main gas field in a sharp escalation of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Netanyahu told a press conference that Tehran no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium, a claim that has been contested by the UN's nuclear watchdog.

Netanyahu sought during the 45-minute event to defend his country's military operations even as its attacks on Iran's South Pars field inspired tit-for-tat strikes on energy plants across the Gulf, sending energy prices sp...