Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to strike Iran earlier this month, including civilian infrastructure, but was stopped by Donald Trump, who wanted to prioritise the November 3 midterm election before restarting the war, a report has said.
The Israeli military was all set with a multi-day bombing campaign plan on the weekend of October 10 that would have struck civilian infrastructure like electricity plants, apart from nuclear facilities and regime targets, the Financial Times reported, citing three unnamed people.
The bombing was supposed to be more intense than the February 28 attacks by the US and Israel.
The plan was ultimately scrapped for the time being, with Trump expressing reservations about starting a war before the key US midterm elections, the people said. Trump had earlier, in a post on Truth Social, said he would not launch strikes on Iran until November 3.
But both Trump and Netanyahu, who is also facing an election, have threatened to attack Iran and said that the US and Israel will "finish" the job of uprooting the regime.
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It was unclear if the US was supposed to join the new mission directly, but one of the people cited by FT said it was "not an unreasonable scenario" that the two countries would again pair up to attack Iran in the coming weeks.
"There will either be a deal or an attack," the person was quoted as saying, as they suggested that the ultimate goal for the US was to force Iran to agree to their terms in the deal over the Strait of Hormuz, which has been partially blocked for months since February.
New List Of Targets
An Israeli official also said that US defence secretary Pete Hegseth travelled to the country on Monday and held talks with senior officials as well as Netanyahu. During the talks, Israeli officials presented an updated target list with places that were not bombed during the February attack and included civilian infrastructure.
While Trump had planned to pause attacks on Iran till the elections, days later, he threatened further strikes and said, "unless [Iran] change their ways, rapidly", the US and Israel would "soon finish the job".
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Netanyahu, meanwhile, released a video on Monday capturing his conversation with Trump, where he is heard telling the US President, "Donald, you said we have a job to finish, and we'll finish it together."
Netanyahu Threatens Again
On Wednesday, the Israeli prime minister said that the only way to remove the threat posed by Iran was to topple its government.
"Iran wanted to destroy us; we stopped them. They wanted to produce nuclear bombs; we stopped them... Yet they persist," he said during an election rally. "Therefore, there is only one way to end this: by toppling this regime."
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"This is the directive I have issued to the Israel Defence Forces, to the Mossad, and to all our security branches," he added, without specifying when or how that directive would be executed.