The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday revealed the identities of four senior Iranian and Hezbollah officials involved in a joint project to manufacture precision-guided missiles for the Lebanese terror group, in a dramatic move apparently intended as a tacit threat to the officers. The army warned that the Iranian-led project was “jeopardizing the stability of Lebanon.”
The secretive program is being led on the Iranian side by Brig. Gen. Muhammad Hussein-Zada Hejazi, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operating under the direct command of Qassem Soleimani, a general who heads the IRGC’s Quds Force, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters.
According to Conricus, Iran has intensified its efforts to establish facilities capable of producing precision-guided missiles in Lebanon in recent weeks.
The Israeli military said it was taking the highly irregular step of releasing information about active members of a terrorist plot in order to push the Lebanese government and international community to take action to halt the project. Conricus said the IDF would likely reveal additional intelligence about the plot within the coming hours and days.
“Iran is endangering Lebanese by trying to produce precision-guided missiles on Lebanese soil, using the Lebanese people as human shields,” Conricus said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said exposing the details of the program was meant to send a signal to Israel’s enemies.
“We will not stand to the side and allow our enemies to acquire deadly weapons to use against us. This week, I already told our enemies to be careful with their actions. Now I am telling them: Dir balak,” Netanyahu said, using an Arabic phrase meaning, “Watch out.”
The release of the declassified information on the largely secret missile project targeting Israel, which was first highlighted by Netanyahu in a speech to the UN General Assembly last year, was also seen by some analysts as marking an effort to avoid the need for a large-scale military operation to destroy the program. Israel was seen to be both intimidating Iran and Hezbollah with the quality and detail of its intelligence, and spurring the international community to take action before the IDF undertook such a campaign. The revelation constitutes a “potential casus belli,” said Israeli Channel 12’s military analyst Roni Daniel on Thursday night.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have been particularly high this week following Israeli airstrikes on Saturday night on an Iranian position in Syria that killed two Hezbollah members. Israel named the two as Lebanese nationals and said they were involved in a IRGC Quds Force plot to use armed unmanned aerial vehicles against the Jewish state.
The army’s Northern Command said Thursday it had canceled all leave for combat brigades on Israel’s northern border, just hours after the military’s commander in the north warned Israel would offer a “harsh” response to a Hezbollah attack.
Israeli troops on the Lebanese and Syrian borders have been on high alert this week over fears of a reprisal attack from Hezbollah following an alleged Israeli strike on the terror group in Beirut on Sunday and confirmed airstrikes on an Iranian position in Syria that killed two Hezbollah members on Saturday night.
The Israel Defense Forces believes Hezbollah intends to attack IDF soldiers or a military installation on the border, and not civilians.
The freeze on soldiers’ leave in the north will be in effect until further notice, the army said.
Earlier Thursday, Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Amir Baram, who ordered the move, met with mayors of northern communities in a bid to calm jitters over the escalating tensions.
Several mayors asked him if they should open municipal bomb shelters in anticipation of possible conflict with Lebanon. Baram replied that such a step was not yet necessary.
He then seemed to threaten Hezbollah with war.
“You should be preparing not for Hezbollah’s response against the IDF, but for their response to our response” to such an attack, he quipped.
He vowed that “if an IDF soldier is so much as scratched, our response will be harsh.”
Baram said the army was not hampered by the upcoming elections in September.
“The decisions surrounding the latest strikes don’t depend on the elections or on political decisions. The chief of staff has blanket approval to act to disrupt the Iranian entrenchment, and all actions [directed to that end] don’t require the decisions of the political echelon,” Baram told the mayors.
The Lebanese frontier was especially tense Thursday, following an incident the night before Lebanese troops fired on Israeli drones, claiming they had entered Lebanon’s airspace.
The army on Tuesday restricted the movement of military vehicles along roads close to the Lebanese border. Those limitations were not imposed on civilians in border communities.
by Con Coughlin
- The fact that Israel has found it necessary to attack targets so far from its traditional area of military operations close to its immediate borders is indicative of the alarming escalation that has taken place in recent months in the threat Iran poses to Israeli security.
- Earlier this week, in Lebanon, an Israeli drone was reported to have bombed a Palestinian base that is said to be funded by Iran. Israeli warplanes were also reported to have bombed Iranian military bases on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.
- The very idea of Washington sitting down with the Iranians at a time when it is continuing to threaten the security of its closest Middle Eastern ally would be unconscionable.
- The reality is that there can be no meaningful dialogue between Washington and Tehran on a future deal so long as Iran remains committed to its long-standing policy of seeking the wholesale destruction of the Jewish state.
The recent confirmation by US military officials that Israeli warplanes were responsible for the recent attack on an Iranian military base in Iraq demonstrates the alarming extent to which the so-called proxy war between Tehran and Jerusalem has escalated in recent weeks.
According to senior Israeli security sources, spoken to on an off-the-record basis, the base in the northern Iraqi province of Salaheddin was targeted because they believed it was being used to assemble Iranian-made medium-range missiles with the capability to hit targets in Israel.
The threat was deemed so important that senior Israeli officers decided to launch a daring bombing raid that required F-35 stealth warplanes to penetrate Saudi airspace to achieve their objective. It is unclear whether the Saudis, who oppose Iranian meddling in Iraq but do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, gave permission for the Israeli warplanes to enter their airspace.
The attack, which took place on July 19, on the base run a group of local Shia militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, which are sponsored by Iran, is said to have resulted in the deaths of two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, as well as several fighters from the Iranian-backed Hizbollah militia.
To date, there has been no official confirmation from Jerusalem that Israel was responsible for the attack, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the midst of campaigning for re-election in next month's poll, has dropped heavy hints that the Israeli military was responsible for the raid. As speculation mounted about Israel's involvement in the raid, the Israeli premier was reported telling a planning meeting in Jerusalem earlier this week, "We will deepen our roots and strike at our enemies. "
Now, the extent of Israeli involvement has been confirmed by the US, which has 5,000 troops based in Iraq, after military officials said Israel was responsible for carrying out the raid.
This is the first time that Israeli warplanes have attacked targets in Iraq since the famous Operation Babylon bombing raid in 1981 against the Osirak nuclear reactor being built by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of his drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
No comments:
Post a Comment