Israel will ensure Iran does not attain a nuclear weapon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday, following a report that President Donald Trump blocked an Israeli plan to strike the Islamic Republic in May.

According to The New York Times report, Trump rejected the Israeli plan, which would have required American support, amid disputes within his administration as to whether to attack Iran’s nuclear program or negotiate with the Islamic Republic. The president informed Netanyahu of his position when the latter visited Washington last week.

The Prime Minister’s Office released a statement making clear that Netanyahu would not be deterred from continuing to counter the Iranian nuclear threat.

“The prime minister has led countless overt and covert actions in the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program; it is only due to these operations that Iran does not currently possess a nuclear arsenal. These actions have delayed Iran’s nuclear program by approximately a decade, thanks to the prime minister’s persistence in withstanding great opposition both at home and abroad to his vigorous policy against Iran,” the statement reads.

“As the prime minister has made clear more than once: Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons,” the Prime Minister’s Office added.

The Trump administration and its representatives have also consistently said that they will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and the president has threatened to bomb Iran if negotiations do not come to fruition. 

In recent days, the president’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff implied that an agreement may allow Iran to continue limited low-level enrichment of uranium and then walked the comment back, writing on X that “Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment.” 

Netanyahu also included a dig at his domestic political opposition in his statement, saying that the prime minister “has led the global campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, even when the threat was belittled and labeled ‘political spin,’ and the prime minister was called ‘paranoid.’”

Opposition leader Yair Lapid said in a statement: “Already in October, I suggested we attack Iran’s oil fields. Eliminating Iran’s oil industry would destroy its economy and topple the regime. Netanyahu was afraid and stopped it.”

Former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman posted on X that he “read the entire leak to The New York Times and I thought, it’s a good thing that when we bombed the nuclear reactors in Syria and Iraq Netanyahu wasn’t prime minister.” 

Former Defense Minister Benny Gantz took a less political approach, posting on X that “the Iranian regime are experts at stalling. The State of Israel must and can remove the prospect of Iranian nuclear capabilities. Coordinating closely with our great ally, the United States, it is time to change the Middle East.” 

Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff and lawmaker from Gantz’s party, questioned in an interview with Israeli public broadcaster Kan “who had an interest in publicizing this. Attacking Iran is a giant operation. It should have remained in the dark.”