Israel' intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin.

Major General (res.) Amos Yaldin asserted Israel’s political and military independence from the U.S. by saying it could strike Iran on its own, a position he was against three years ago.

In an interview with The New Republic published on Friday, Yadlin, Israel’s former military intelligence chief, said, “Israel doesn’t need America on D-Day. It can do it alone.”

The comment came as part of a four-part answer to the question of what Israel needs to consider before taking a unilateral decision to attack Iran to prevent it from reaching nuclear capability.

Yadlin began by saying that although he was a voice against a strike in 2010, he supported previous Israeli governments facing “very tough alternatives—the ‘bomb’ or the ‘bombing’—I’m with prime minister, for ‘the bombing.””

The first rhetorical question posed by Yadlin in the interview is, “can you live with the bomb?” and his answer is no. The second question is, can Israel’s military destroy enough of Iran’s nuclear capabilities to truly delay the program, which he doesn’t answer in the interview.

His third question is, are all other options off the table? to which he responded, “As long as there is a realistic chance to achieve the ‘no-bomb’ by negotiations, by agreements, Israel doesn’t have legitimacy to do it. I think this is now the main obstacle because Rouhani has given some backwind to the idea that maybe the Iranians will reach an acceptable agreement.”

The fourth question he said, is “do you have sufficient understanding with the United States that this is a legitimate and necessary self-defense measure?” Yaldin answered with surprising candidacy.

“America and Israel are allies. As I explained to you once, Israel doesn’t need America on D-Day. It can do it alone. It even can cope with the day after, but it does need the United States for the decade after,” he told The New Republic.