Despite a Financial Times report, the IDF was not planning a strike on Iran on October 10, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday.
It is true that over the last several months since the April 7 Israel-Iran ceasefire, the IDF has been on a war footing a few times, should the Iranians seem to be about to launch an attack or should US President Donald Trump decide on a renewed joint US-Israel operation against the Islamic Republic.
One of those times was in the days surrounding October 7, as there was high concern in the IDF that Tehran would choose to initiate a new conflict with Israel around that anniversary date.
But neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Defense Minister Israel Katz, nor any other government official, had told the IDF to prepare to attack in the way that such orders were handed down leading up to the June 2025 and early 2026 conflicts with Iran.
In that sense, sources have told the Post that the premise of the Financial Times report - that Trump blocked Israel from an attack on Iran which it was about to carry out - is wrong, because Israel was not about to carry out an attack.
Put simply, Trump could not block an attack that was not planned.
Sources have speculated that a leak of such a potential attack on Iran to the Financial Times could be designed to impact the Israeli election, with Netanyahu claiming that he was ready to attack Iran a third time, but was prevented by Trump.
Such a story might also assist Trump in the US midterm elections, as it would seem to present him as responsibly managing the conflict with Iran, which is extremely unpopular among both Democrats and Republicans.
The narrative that Netanyahu is seeking to attack is also easy to support, since the IDF has been on a war footing a few times recently, including in the days before and after October 7.
In other words, the narrative isn't true, but it's not far from the truth, according to sources.
More comprehensively, sources have told the Post and other Israeli and foreign media that the IDF has been prepared to take action against Iran for months in two main scenarios: 1) where the IDF would see that Iran is about to attack first; or 2) with a joint US-Israel resumption of hostilities.
Trump stated he backed out of attacking Iran in August
On August 2, Trump himself publicized that he backed down from an attack on Iran which could have eventually involved the IDF.
In recent days, Trump has heightened his public threats against Iran, including specifically against Pickaxe Mountain, and sources have confirmed that if Washington had gone forward with a strike, this could have made Israeli participation far more likely.
Another issue with the Financial Times report is the idea that a future attack by Israel and the US would be larger in scale than the early 2026 war, when Iran has not repaired enough of what was bombed then for a larger attack to take place.
Sources have noted that top Israeli officials have publicly called for targeting Iran's energy sector more robustly, something which was more limited in early 2026, but this by itself would not constitute a larger-scale attack after Israel and the Us dropped around 30,000 bombs.
In addition, sources said that it was strange that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir was not invited to a meeting with US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at the Ovda IDF air force base this week.
Although US secretaries of defense usually meet with their Israeli counterparts and often with the prime minister, rare visits to Israel invariably involve the IDF chief because of his influence on war and peace matters.
Sources speculated that Netanyahu may have been influenced by political considerations about how to portray Hegseth's visit and what messages would be passed back and forth, in his decision to keep Zamir and the IDF out of the meeting.
Hegseth has held far fewer visits with Israel than his predecessor, and his visits, as well as Katz's, have at times been shortened or canceled.