After years of waiting, Israel's Netanyahu finally makes his move on Iran

(Corrects year in paragraph 21 to 2011 from 2015)

By Crispian Balmer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Iran once ridiculed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the boy who cried wolf for his constant public warnings about Tehran's nuclear programme, and his repeated threats to shut it down, one way or another.

"You can only fool some of the people so many times," Iran's then-foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said in 2018 after Netanyahu had once again accused Iran of planning to build nuclear weapons.

On Friday, after two decades of continually raising the alarm and urging other world leaders to act, Netanyahu finally decided to go it alone, authorising an Israeli air assault aimed, Israel says, at preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

In an address to the nation, Netanyahu, as he has so often before, evoked the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust in World War Two to explain his decision.

"Nearly a century ago, facing the Nazis, a generation of leaders failed to act in time," Netanyahu said, adding that a policy of appeasing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had led to the deaths of 6 million Jews, "a third of my people".

"After that war, the Jewish people and the Jewish state vowed never again. Well, never again is now today. Israel has shown that we have learned the lessons of history."

Iran says its nuclear energy programme is only for peaceful purposes, although the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday declared the country in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years.

Netanyahu, a former member of an elite special forces unit responsible for some of Israel’s most daring hostage rescues, has dominated its politics for decades, becoming the longest-serving prime minister when he won an unprecedented sixth term in 2022.

Throughout his years in office, he rarely missed an opportunity to lecture foreign leaders about the dangers posed by Iran, displaying cartoons of an atomic bomb at the United Nations, while always hinting he was ready to strike.

In past premierships, military analysts said his room for manoeuvre with Iran was limited by fears an attack would trigger instant retaliation from Tehran's regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, that would be hard to contain.

But the past two years have upended the Middle East, with Israel hammering Hamas after it launched a massive surprise attack of its own against Israel in October 2023, and then dismantling much of Hezbollah in just a few days in 2024.

BLINDSIDED BY TRUMP

Israel has also sparred openly with Tehran since 2024, firing rocket salvos deep into Iran last year that gave Netanyahu confidence in the power of his military reach.

Israeli military sources said the strikes disabled four of Iran's Russian-made air-defence systems, including one positioned near Natanz, a key Iranian nuclear site that was targeted, according to Iranian television.

"Iran is more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal — to thwart and eliminate the existential threat," Defence Minister Israel Katz said in November.

But much to the consternation of Netanyahu, newly installed U.S. President Donald Trump blindsided him during a visit to the White House in April, when he announced the United States and Iran were poised to begin direct nuclear talks.

Netanyahu has locked horns with successive U.S. presidents over Iran, most noticeably Barack Obama, who approved a deal with Tehran in 2015 imposing significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Trump pulled out of the accord in 2018, and Netanyahu had hoped that he would continue to take an uncompromising stance against Iran when he returned to office this year.

In announcing talks, the White House set a two-month deadline for Iran to sign a deal. Even though a fresh round of meetings was set for this weekend, the unofficial deadline expired on Thursday and Netanyahu pounced.

One Israeli official told state broadcaster Kan that Israel had coordinated with Washington ahead of the attacks and suggested recent newspaper reports of a rift between Trump and Netanyahu over Iran had been a ruse to lull the Tehran leadership into a false sense of security.

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Trump - who said after the strikes began that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb but that he wants talks to proceed - has previously hailed the right-wing Netanyahu as a great friend. Other leaders have struggled with him.

In 2011, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was overheard talking about Netanyahu with Obama. "I can't stand him any more, he's a liar," he said.

The man once known as "King Bibi" to his supporters has faced a difficult few years and at 75, time is running out for him to secure his legacy.

His hawkish image was badly tarnished by the 2023 Hamas attack, with polls showing most Israelis blaming him for the security failures that allowed the deadliest assault since the founding of the nation more than 75 years ago.

He has subsequently been indicted by the International Criminal Court over possible war crimes tied to Israel's 20-month invasion of Gaza, which has reduced much of the Palestinian territory to rubble. He rejects the charges against him.

Polls show most Israelis believe the war in Gaza has gone on for too long, with Netanyahu dragging out the conflict to stay in power and stave off elections that pollsters say he will lose.

Even as the multi-front war has progressed, he has had to take the stand in his own, long-running corruption trial, where he denies any wrongdoing, which has further dented his reputation at home.

However, he hopes a successful military campaign against Israel's arch foe will secure his place in the history books he so loves to read.

"Generations from now, history will record that our generation stood its ground, acted in time and secured our common future. May God bless Israel. May God bless the forces of civilisation, everywhere," he said in Friday's speech.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell and James Mackenzie; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)