Netanyahu ally: I believe he’ll strike in Iran if nuclear talks fail, US doesn’t actTzachi Hanegbi tells TV news that confronting the Iranian nuclear threat has been ‘a fire burning inside’ incoming premier; ‘when there is no choice, someone needs to take command’A longtime ally of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said he believes the presumed incoming prime minister will order a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities if the US does not secure a new nuclear deal with Tehran and fails to take action itself.Speaking to Channel 12 news on Friday, Tzachi Hanegbi said that in such a situation, Netanyahu “will act, in my assessment, to destroy the nuclear facilities in Iran.”Hanegbi, a longtime Likud MK and former minister who is not expected to make it into the next Knesset (after placing 46 on the party’s slate in primaries), has made threats of a potential Israeli strike in the past to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.Asked if Netanyahu had actually told him of such plans, Hanegbi said: “It’s my assessment, based on my over 35 years of knowing Netanyahu… When there is no choice, someone needs to take command — it will be Netanyahu.”In January 2021, Hanegbi warned that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear program if the United States rejoined the nuclear deal.But following the US abrogation of the nuclear deal in 2018 and Iran’s subsequent violations of the agreement since then, the matter has taken on renewed importance to Israel, which sees an Iranian nuclear bomb as a near existential threat.IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi said earlier this year that the military “continues to prepare vigorously for an attack on Iran and must prepare for every development and every scenario.”In addition to having to find ways to strike Iranian facilities that are buried deep underground, requiring specialized munitions and tactics, the Israeli Air Force would have to deal with increasingly sophisticated Iranian air defenses in order to conduct such a strike."