Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu set a general timetable for a possible strike on Iran Thursday evening, for the first time.

Netanyahu said that Israel has not yet made a decision on whether to attack the Iranian nuclear sites. He added that the timing of such a strike “is not a matter of days or weeks,” but on the other hand, “it is not a matter of years.”

“I am not standing with a stopwatch in my hand,” he told Channels 2 and 10 in a joint interview, upon his return from a five day visit to Canada and the United States.  

Israel will be “glad” if Iran halts its nuclear program on its own. “I, too, will be happy,” he said. “I will be happy if the sanctions work – all the better. But we cannot know, and we will not accept a situation in which Iran has nuclear weapons.”

He warned that Israel faces “an existential danger,” and added: “If I do not make the right decision, there may be no one left to explain to [why I made the wrong choice].”