Former Mossad chief claims Netanyahu planned Iran strike in 2011

A former Mossad chief claimed on Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave the order for the military to prepare to attack Iran within 15 days, back in 2011.

According to excerpts of an interview released ahead of the broadcast, Tamir Pardo - who served as head of the Israeli intelligence agency from 2011 to 2016 - spoke in an Israeli investigate show Uvda, on Keshet TV, said that the order was not given "for the sake of a drill".

"When he tells you to start the countdown process, you know that he isn't playing games with you," Pardo is quoted as saying. "These things have enormous significance."

Netanyahu's office did not comment on Pardo's claim.

The Israeli leader said on Wednesday that Israel "will not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons".

"We will continue to act against its intentions to establish itself militarily in Syria besides us, not just opposite the Golan Heights, but any place in Syria," the premier stated.

An investigation by NBC News last week revealed that a private Israeli security firm attempted to discredit the former US President Barack Obama's administration, who worked on a nuclear deal with Iran, in an attempt to sabotage the agreement.

The latest allegations come as Israel and Iran fight a shadowy war in Syria, which briefly threatened to burst into full-blown conflagration this month after Israel bombed Iranian positions in Syria.

The strikes killed a number of Iranian fighters after an alleged Iranian rocket barrage toward the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

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In February, Israel shot down what it said was an armed Iranian drone that entered Israeli airspace. Israel responded by attacking anti-aircraft positions in Syria. An Israeli warplane was shot down during the battle.

Pardo said that upon receiving the command, he sought "clarifications about everything I could, I checked with legal advisers, I consulted with everyone I could to understand who is authorised to give the order concerning launching a war".

According to the excerpts, Pardo said he wanted "to be certain that if, heaven forbid, something incorrect happened, even if the mission failed, that there won't be a situation where I carried out an illegal operation".

It wasn't clear from the preview what happened after Netanyahu's purported order, but Israel never carried out a strike on Iran in 2011.

Netanyahu has been a leading critic of the nuclear agreement, saying it did not contain sufficient safeguards to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear-weapons grade capability. 

US President Donald Trump withdrew from the landmark 2015 deal after citing a much-derided presentation by Netanyahu, in which he claimed to have a trove of intelligence on a pre-2003 Iranian plan to develop a nuclear weapon - information that observers say the IAEA likely already know.