Bennett, Lapid blast Netanyahu after reports strike on Iran was scuttled
Opposition leader says he suggested hitting Iran last October, but PM ‘was afraid’ and blocked the proposal; Bennett says it is the ‘Netanyahu doctrine’ to make empty threats
Commenting on a report that US President Donald Trump blocked an Israeli-proposed strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid on Thursday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of scuttling opportunities to hit Iran in the past.
“Back in October, I proposed attacking Iran’s oil fields,” Lapid said, but “Netanyahu was afraid, and stopped it.”
Meanwhile, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who will likely compete with Netanyahu for right-wing votes in the next election, implied that the premier was himself behind the leak of the stalled plan to The New York Times.
“The Netanyahu doctrine is to threaten, threaten, threaten and then leak that he meant to [do something] but was prevented from doing it,” Bennett said in a statement, adding that this was “another dangerous conception that mustn’t blow up in our faces. There won’t be another such opportunity [to hit Iran].”
Bennett measured his political rival against former prime minister Menachem Begin, whose attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor crystallized the so-called Begin Doctrine of preventive strikes on hostile countries’ nuclear sites. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert is seen as having continued the doctrine when Israel bombed a hidden Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 at his direction.
“I read the entire leak in The New York Times, and thought how lucky it was that at the time we bombed the nuclear reactors in Syria and Iraq, Netanyahu was not the prime minister,” tweeted Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman.
To his left, Labor MK Naama Lazimi claimed that the report on the US-thwarted Iran strike was proof Netanyahu was “weak on security and on defending Israel.”
“Not only did he miss every opportunity to attack Iran — he is to blame for it being on the cusp of becoming a nuclear state,” she wrote.
The Times reported Wednesday that Trump had blocked Israeli proposals for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, opting instead to try for a diplomatic solution.
The dismissal of Jerusalem’s plan, which Israeli officials were reportedly prepared to launch in May if they could garner US support, came amid internal divisions in the Trump administration, the report said, citing administration officials and others.
Sources briefed on the proposed attack said it aimed to set back Iran’s ability to break out to a bomb by at least a year, but months of debate among Trump’s aides on the issue resulted in a consensus against military action, as Tehran showed signs of being open to talks.
Citing multiple officials with knowledge of Israel’s plans, the report outlined planned Israeli offensives in which the US would play an essential role by both helping to execute the attack successfully and protecting Israel against a retaliatory strike.
Also responding to the report, National Unity chairman Benny Gantz urged a strike on Iran with US assistance.
“The Iranian regime is an expert at stalling. The State of Israel must and can remove the prospect of Iranian nuclear capabilities,” he wrote on X. “Coordinating closely with our great ally the United States, it is time to change the Middle East.”
From within Netanyahu’s coalition, Likud MK Tally Gotliv defended the premier’s deference to the American pivot, saying that attacking Iran is not a question of “yes or no, but only a question of timing.”
“What I know, Prime Minister Netanyahu also knows. Patience is not a dirty word, along with vigilance and cunning against our enemies,” she tweeted.
The Times of Israel Community.