Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned on Thursday that Israel would likely no longer see limited conflicts on single fronts, but rather would have to face a multi-front escalation in the near future.
“This is the end of the era of limited conflicts,” Gallant told reporters in a briefing. “We are facing a new security era in which there may be a real threat to all arenas at the same time.
“We operated for years under the assumption that limited conflicts could be managed, but that is a phenomenon that is disappearing. Today, there is a noticeable phenomenon of the convergence of the arenas,” Gallant said.
Earlier this month the country saw a security escalation on multiple fronts over the course of a few days, with rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and Israeli retaliatory strikes; a barrage of rockets from Lebanon; a rocket attack from Syria; a suspected Iranian drone launched from Syria and Israeli strikes in response; clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount; and deadly terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank.
“Iran is the driving force in the convergence of the arenas. It transfers resources, ideology, knowledge, and training to its proxies,” Gallant said, referring to Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and other Iran-backed militias across the region.
The Hamas terror group that rules the Gaza Strip is funded by Iran with $100 million annually, with additional funding worth tens of millions of dollars going to the second largest terror group in the Palestinian enclave, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gallant said.
In Syria, hundreds of millions of dollars are sent to Iranian-backed militias each year, and the Syrian regime led by dictator Bashar Assad receives billions of dollars from Iran, he added.
Gallant said that Iran-backed militias in Iraq receive funding worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year as well as weaponry; and in Yemen, the Houthi rebel group is funded by Iran with hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
“The increasing dependence [of the proxies] on Iran leads them to step over the boundaries and become more brazen,” Gallant said.
Speaking on the Iranian nuclear program, Gallant said, “Iran is closer than ever to reaching military nuclear capability.”
“In the face of this threat, we must act in one of two ways: military action or a credible military threat,” he said.
Israel has been pushing for the US to prepare military contingency plans in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. US President Joe Biden has said he is prepared to use military force if necessary, but still prefers to exhaust the diplomatic route first.
But in light of the lack of progress regarding a return by Iran to a 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, the past two years have seen the IDF ramp up efforts to prepare a credible military threat against Tehran’s nuclear sites.
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