Eight months in the making: Israeli officials claim they 'had a clear US green light' to strike Iran

Two Israeli officials claimed that President Donald Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose the Israeli attack on Iran in public but in private, they didn't express opposition, Axios reported. "We had a clear US green light," one said, as quoted by the report. The report claimed that the operation targeting Iran's nuclear facilities, missile sites, scientists and generals was planned for eight months.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Israeli strikes against Iran were a unilateral action. Trump signaled that he knew about as he called it 'excellent' and warned that a lot more would come. “They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more," Trump said.


“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.

“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

In a follow-up post, Trump argued that Iran should have secured the nuclear deal months ago.

Before the strikes, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Ynet, said Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without a green light from Washington. “I won’t be making that decision,” Huckabee said. “I just don’t in my mind see that that would be something that would likely happen because of the closeness of the relationship and the trust, and that’s the word I would emphasize, there is a trust between the US and Israel.”