Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said Monday it was time for Israel to stop criticizing the United States over the nuclear deal it and world powers struck with Iran.

Speaking Monday at the International Institute for Counterterrorism's annual conference in the coastal city of Herzliya, Dagan said: "The problem is Iran, not President [Barack] Obama."

Dagan has been a fierce critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line policies regarding Iran. He vocally opposed the prospect of an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities that Netanyahu is said to have supported.

Dagan said Israel made a "strategic decision" to adopt a policy against the United States and "it is time to end it."

Dagan is a retired military general who headed Israel's secretive Mossad agency from 2002-2011.