As Washington debates whether Iran was close enough to a nuclear bomb to justify Israel acting militarily, and as President Trump delays a decision on joining the battle, Prime Minister Netanyahu says the Tehran threat was so acute that he decided to launch Operation Rising Lion last week even after last-minute snags almost aborted it.  

“Growing telltale signs could have canceled our plans” to strike Iran last week, Mr. Netnayahu said in a rare Hebrew-language interview with a public broadcaster, Kann television, Thursday. He said Iranian plane and troop maneuvers raised doubts about the operation. Asked if those doubts would have caused him to order the Israeli jets to return while already in the air, the prime minister said he reserves that information for the history books.

America is widely believed to have the capacity to hasten the endgame in Iran by using weapons Israel doesn’t possess to destroy Iran’s nuclear crown jewel, the deeply dug facility at Fordow. 

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, quoted Mr. Trump as saying in a statement.

Critics doubt that Israel could in fact end Iran’s nuclear aspirations, even with help. It already significantly damaged several known nuclear sites, and the Fordow facility might be destroyed by American B-2 stealth jets carrying 30,000-pound bombs. Yet, has the Islamic Republic already secreted away enough nuclear fuel to make weapons? It could be hidden in a country that is two and a half times larger than Texas.  

“Israel needs to hunt and destroy those items,” the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, tells the Sun. “Mossad is already appealing for Iranian ‘converts,’ but it needs time to accomplish this mission.” This week the Israeli external intelligence body posted Farsi-language messages urging Iranians to gather information on the nuclear program on its behalf. 

“It is a fact, and the United States government maintains this fact, that Iran has never been closer to obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Ms. Leavitt said. Opponents of American military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities are challenging that assessment. 

“So far, at least, the intelligence community has stood by its conclusion that Iran is not moving towards a nuclear weapon,” Senator Warner of West Virginia said. “If there has been a change in that intelligence, I need to know, and I want to make sure that if it is changed, it’s based upon fact and not political influence.”

In March, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

That, though, is “like saying a football team marched 99 yards down the field, got to the one yard line, and, oh, they don’t have the intention to score,” the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Radcliffe, reportedly told Congress in a closed-door briefing.   

Yet, Iranians and their supporters lean on Ms. Gabbars, and on the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Rafael Grossi, who said Wednesday that the agency did not have “proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon” by Iran. Last week, Mr. Grossi reported that Iran is violating its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.  

The IAEA chief’s new statement is “too late,” the Tehran foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, said. Iran’s former foreign minister, Javad Zarif, added that Mr. Grossi “must be held accountable for his complicity in the death of innocents in Iran caused by Israeli aggression using his report as a pretext.”

Yet, Mr. Albright, a former weapons inspector, says that Mr. Grossi’s much-cited language, including on CNN, is misleading. “In context, his meaning is very different,” Mr. Albright says. A transcript of Mr. Grossi’s entire statement started by acknowledging that “there are things we do not know.” 

If the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader decided on a breakthrough, Mr. Grossi added, “the material is there because they have more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched at 60 percent, which is one step away from the 90 percent, which is required for a nuclear bomb.” Additional steps, including, possibly, conducting a nuclear test, are needed to turn enriched uranium into a weapon, he added.

“Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon,” Ms. Leavitt said Thursday. “All they need is a decision from the supreme leader to do that, and it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon.”