JERUSALEM – Israel’s prime minister ordered the military to go on high alert for a looming attack on Iran’s nuclear program two years ago, but backed off following strong objections from senior security officials, a respected Israeli news program reported Monday.

The report exposed a deep rift between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top security officials over the wisdom of attacking Iran but also indicated that Israel was much closer to carrying out a strike at that time than was previously known.

Channel 2 TV’s flagship investigative program “Uvda,” or “Fact,” reported that toward the end of a meeting in 2010 Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, ordered Israel’s military chief and director of the Mossad espionage agency to put the country on “P Plus” status – code for pre-attack mode on Iran.