The US monitored Israeli activity to make sure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not carry out an uncoordinated strike against Iran's nuclear program, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
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According to the report, the US believed that Israel was on the verge of attacking the Islamic republic in 2012, and at one point discovered that Israel was allegedly carrying out extensive intelligence operations without its knowledge through Azerbaijan.
The Times said that the information was gathered through "interviews with dozens of current and former American, Israeli and European officials over several months reveal the startling details of how close the Israeli military came to attacking Iran in 2012."
The interviews also showed "the extent to which the Obama administration felt required to develop its own military contingency plans in the event of such an attack, including destroying a full-size mock-up of an Iranian nuclear facility in the western desert of the United States with a 30,000-pound bomb; how Americans monitored Israel even as Israel monitored Iran, with American satellites capturing images of Israel launching surveillance drones into Iran from a base in Azerbaijan; and previously unknown details about the scope of Netanyahu's pressure campaign to get Trump to leave the Iran deal."
Netanyahu is quoted in the report as saying "this [the potential attack] was not a bluff – it was real. And only because it was real were the Americans truly worried about it."
"If I'd had a majority, I would have done it," Netanyahu said. "Unequivocally."
The Times reported that "a parade of top American officials began flying to Israel during Barack Obama's first term to take the measure of the Israeli planning and to convince Netanyahu and [then Defense Minister] Ehud Barak that the United States was taking the problem seriously and that Iran was hardly on the brink of getting the bomb."
Regarding the possibility that the Trump administration would strike another deal with Iran rather than continue the pressure on Tehran, Netanyahu told the Times that "this time, we will have far greater ability to exert influence [compared to during the Obama presidency]."
