IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi requested a budget for a strike on Iran three times in 2019 and 2020 but then-prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu refused his requests, Channel 13 News reported on Monday evening.

Netanyahu told Kochavi that he could not allocate the funds due to the lack of a state budget. According to the report, Netanyahu had allocated NIS 11 billion for preparations for an Iran strike years ago but that money had long been spent.

It was only in 2020, after the formation of a unity government, that the Defense Ministry and the IDF found a solution for funding by using an advance of the US’s annual defense aid to Israel, a move approved by the Attorney General.

Netanyahu’s office issued a statement in response to the report: “The one who constantly pushed the defense establishment to budget and prepare for an attack against Iran was davka Prime Minister Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu is the one who in 2019 demanded to allocate part of the IDF budget for special means of attack against Iran. He also designated this as the uppermost goal for Israel’s national security in the Political-Security Cabinet and the Defense Ministry.”

“Netanyahu instituted that preparations for an attack on Iran precede other arenas in the IDF’s force building program. Netanyahu was also the one who solved the problem of the budget increase in 2020 by using a special repayment mechanism which enabled an important addition to the existing preparations for an attack against Iran. All this was in parallel with additional budgets that Netanyahu transferred to other bodies for the same purpose. This is based on detailed protocols of the Cabinet and security bodies.”

“These false and one-sided leaks are a continuation of the attempt to dwarf Netanyahu’s actions against Iran and it is to be hoped that this false campaign is not intended to legitimize the current government’s incompetence on Iran in the eyes of the public. Had it not been for Netanyahu’s political, operational, and budgetary actions over the past decade, Iran would long ago have had an arsenal of nuclear weapons.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)