Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called a special meeting of his security cabinet following Iran’s testing of a ballistic missile that can reach Israel over the weekend.
The missile test, along with efforts to get world powers to cancel or fix the Iran nuclear deal, were the top priorities at the meeting, Israel Radio reported.
Netanyahu also planned to brief the body on his meetings last week in New York during which he held discussions with US President Donald Trump and separately with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
During the gathering, scheduled for 4 p.m., the prime minister was also expected raise the subject of the Iranian military presence in Syria, the Ynet website reported.
On Saturday, Iran said it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile, in defiance of warnings from Washington that it is ready to ditch the landmark nuclear deal over the issue.
Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday called the test a “provocation” to the United States and a threat to the entire free world.
“The ballistic missile that was fired by Iran is not only a a provocation and a slap in the face for the United States and its allies — and an attempt to test them — but also further proof of the Iranian ambitions to become a world power and threaten countries in the Middle East and all the countries of the free world,” Liberman said in a statement.
“Imagine what would happen if Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. That is what it is striving for. We cannot allow it to happen,” Liberman said.
Last Monday, Netanyahu met with Trump, Netanyahu, focusing on the Iran nuclear deal and the Islamic Republic’s military expansion in the region.
Israeli officials have raised their concerns over Iran extending its military influence into Syria –in particular to areas near the border with Israel — by way of its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah that has been fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime as it battles against an insurgency now in its sixth year.
During his speech to the UN General Assembly last Tuesday, Netanyahu urged an end to the 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran that saw the lifting of sanctions in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program to prevent it producing weapons.
He also brought it up in his meeting with Trump. After the meeting, the White House said in a statement that the two men had discussed efforts to counter “Iran’s malign influence” in the Middle East, as well as “optimism in the region” about Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Trump has threatened to scrap and/or amend the agreement over the issue, saying that Iran’s missile program could give it the technical know-how for a delivery system for a nuclear warhead when a sunset clause in the deal expires in 2025.
He is due to report to Congress on October 15 on whether he believes Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal. If he decides that it is not, it could open the way for renewed US sanctions and perhaps the collapse of the agreement. Trump said on Wednesday he had made his decision, but was not yet ready to reveal it.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday called an Iranian test of a missile that could reach Israel a “provocation” to the United States and a threat to the entire free world.
Earlier in the day, Iran said it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile, in defiance of warnings from Washington that it is ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.
“The ballistic missile that was fired by Iran is not only a a provocation and a slap in the face for the United States and its allies — and an attempt to test them — but also further proof of the Iranian ambitions to become a world power and threaten countries in the Middle East and all the countries of the free world,” Liberman said in a statement.
“Imagine what would happen if Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. That is what it is striving for. We cannot allow it to happen,” Liberman said.
Iranian State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday. It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.
The broadcaster gave no date for the test, although officials had said on Friday that it would be tested “soon.”
“As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country’s defense capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile,” Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Hatami said in a statement Saturday.
Revolutionary Guards aerospace chief General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying on Friday, when the missile was unveiled, that “the Khoramshahr missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and can carry multiple warheads.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will visit Israel next month to discuss the two countries’ ongoing security coordination in Syria, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s office confirmed on Sunday.
It will be Shoigu’s first official visit to Israel, and the first visit for a Russian defense minister to the Jewish state in many years.
According to Liberman’s office, the two defense ministers will “discuss the continuing coordination of the two militaries, the cooperation between the two countries and Iran’s entrenchment in Syria, in which the Iranians are transferring advanced weapons to Hezbollah through Damascus.”
Liberman’s office would not give a specific date for Shoigu’s trip, but said it would take place sometime in mid-October.
Israel Radio, which first reported on the planned visit, said Israeli defense officials ascribe great importance to the trip.
While Shoigu has yet to visit Israel in his five years as defense minister, he has made multiple trips to Syria, including one earlier this month, as well as a surprise stop in Iran last year.
The soft-spoken defense minister is seen by many analysts as a driving force behind Russia’s aggressive support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
The visit would be a departure from recent years, which have seen Israeli leaders travel to Russia multiple times for diplomatic meetings, but almost no such sit-downs taking place in Israel. Last month, for instance, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladmir Putinin the Russian resort town of Sochi.
Israel has repeatedly stated that it will act militarily in Syria if one of its “red lines” is violated, notably the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. This is potentially problematic for the Jewish state’s relations with Russia, as Moscow has aligned itself with Assad, who is also allied with Iran and Hezbollah.
In order to avoid friction and accidental conflict for the past two years Israel and Russia have coordinated their military efforts in Syria.
Israeli officials do not generally discuss the full extent of that coordination, but they stress that the Israeli military does not seek Russian permission before carrying out operations.
As the Syrian civil war appears to be coming to a close, or at least stagnating, Israel’s attention has increasingly turned to the threats posed by Syria’s other ally, Iran, in establishing bases and military infrastructure near the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.
Who would win in a fight: North Korea, Iran, or an earthquake? That seems to be the question at the center of Israel’s print press Sunday morning, after a long hiatus thanks to the Rosh Hoshanah holiday and amid ever-rising tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, and maybe Tehran too.
With US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leadership trading barbs and Iran testing a new missile, two out of the three main dailies (Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth) focus mostly on nuclear saber-rattling with North Korea, while only Israel Hayom makes a mostly silly debate explicit with a front-page headline reading “North Korea is dangerous, Iran is much more so.”
The headline sounds like a continuation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to lobby the US to deal with Iran and forget about North Korea, and the column attached to the headline (because who wants news on the front page after 4 days without?), by former Netanyahu national security aide Yaakov Amidror, continues that theme.
"If you want to understand Iran you need to look at what North Korea is doing, except Iran is bigger, stronger and has much more potential,” he writes, before issuing what sounds like a challenge to the US. “It seems that if the US won’t do anything about countries like Iran and North Korea, no other power will. And the US is wavering. It will be interesting to see what it will do now, after the aggressive things said by the president at the UN, before the Iranians showed their disregard for them by launching a missile test right afterward. For Israel this is a critical question, since an American decision not to do anything will force Israel to think differently on what it should do in the future, on its own.”
Both Yedioth and Haaretz, meanwhile, focus on what might be entertaining if it weren’t so scary, the intercontinental insult and threat battle taking place between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Yedioth quotes from some of the best one-liners on its front page, but inside the paper it also links North Korea to Iran, calling it a “double, immediate threat,” which sounds worse than the double secret probation in “Animal House.” In an accompanying column, Alex Fishman writes that the Iranians are learning what to do from the North Koreans, calling the Khoramshahr ballistic missile tested by Iran “clearly North Korean, and showing the close cooperation between the countries.”
Fishman’s own column appears to reveal close cooperation between him and Israeli officials with an agenda/bone to pick, with him blaming that ayatollah-lover Barack Obama for Israel’s Iran woes.
“Back in 2013, when an interim deal was signed between the powers and Iran, it was known to Israel that representatives of Obama and Iran put together a secret side deal, and even then it was known the Iranian got secret American agreement to develop missiles with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers. At the same time, Iran was developing missiles with a range of between 2,500 and 5,000 kilometers, which could get to the Europe and the US,” Fishman writes, apparently not realizing that Iran would need twice that distance to reach the US.
“The Americans put a red line on the Iranians in the secret talks: Not to the US and not to Europe, but up to 2,000 kilometers, the exact effective distance to Iran’s main enemy: Israel. And if you want, also Saudi Arabia.”
1 comment:
Here it is, right now 6:00pm et (1:00am Jerusalem) ...AWESOME! THOUSANDS at the Kotel, singing in unison...while the Rabbis lead in Prayer! Just AWESOME to witness! There will be other nights, much larger than this coming over the days of next week :)
https://english.thekotel.org/kotel/kotel_cameras/
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