UN envoy: Israel launched Iran strike after intelligence showed Tehran advancing plans to destroy Israel and US

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, says in an interview on Fox News that Israel launched a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear and military sites after receiving intelligence that Tehran was “moving forward” with plans to “destroy” both Israel and the United States.

Asked about what intelligence Israel received that prompted its attack last night, Danon says that “for years,” Israel was aware of threats from Iran “to destroy Israel, to destroy the United States,” but that Israel had “gathered intelligence that they [Iran] are actually moving forward” to execute such plans by pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

In addition to trying to develop a nuclear weapon, Iran was attempting to reach the same ballistic missile capabilities, in terms of number of missiles, as the US and Russia, as well as use its proxies in the Middle East to pursue its goal of destroying Israel, says Danon.

Through its proxies, Iran planned to “initiate another attack like October 7,” he adds.

“Once we gathered the information about that, we decided not to wait. We believed their intentions,” says the envoy.

“We expect very intense days ahead of us,” he continues, “but we took that risk because we realized the option to wait for Iran to actually assemble the nuclear capability on the ballistic missiles — we can not wait for that.”

“It’s going to be a long operation…we are determined to finish the job,” he says.