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

JERUSALEM, - 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.

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"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. The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.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."