Burnt vehicles are seen at the scene where a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip hit, in Holon, Israel May 11, 2021.  (photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)

The massive rocket barrage – involving some 600 rockets from Gaza in a 24-hour period, reaching the crescendo of hundreds of rockets fired around nine in the evening, blanketing central and southern Israel – may be linked to Iran’s warnings about a single, large operation.

Iran’s IRGC head Hossein Salami warned last week that Israel was vulnerable to one large tactical operation because the country is so small. He pointed to the S-200 fired from Syria near Dimona and other threats to Israel as an example of how vulnerable the country is.

The post Is massive Hamas attack on Israel the assault Iran warned of? – analysis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A UN force drive past Hezbollah flag and a concrete barrier in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel, Aug. 26, 2020 (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Thursday that Hezbollah will be “fatally wounded” if Israel needs to go to war in Lebanon, after the terror group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened Israel following an Israel Defense Forces exercise simulating war with the terror group.

“If we have to go to battle, Lebanon will tremble and Hezbollah will be fatally wounded,” Gantz said at a ceremony to honor soldiers who fell in battle and whose burial places are unknown.

“If there are days of fighting on the various fronts, they will be difficult for the Israeli home front, but it will be difficult and terrible first and foremost for our enemies,” Gantz said. “This is especially true for Hezbollah and Hamas, which are building offensive capabilities from within civilian areas and committing war crimes.”

The comments came after Nasrallah issued a warning to Israel on Tuesday, following the IDF exercise.

“We don’t seek a fight with Israel, but if it starts a war, we will fight,” Nasrallah said, according to Channel 13, adding that Hezbollah would bomb Israeli cities if the IDF were to bomb Lebanese cities.

“No one can guarantee that a few days of combat between us and Israel won’t lead to a wider war,” he said. “We’re following [events] and weighing our decisions. We won’t accept something that will put our country in danger.”

The Israeli Air Force completed a three-day surprise exercise simulating a large-scale war with Hezbollah this week, including mock strikes on some 3,000 targets in one day, the military said, in a clear threat to the Lebanese terror group.

An F-35 fighter jet takes off during a surprise exercise, ‘Galilee Rose,’ in February 2021. (Israel Defense Forces)

The exercise also simulated Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, including the firing of cruise missiles and other advanced munitions, as well as standard, albeit massive, rocket launches at both military and civilian targets in the Jewish state, a senior air force officer told reporters.

The surprise exercise came amid lingering tension in the region between Israel and Hezbollah over the death of one of the terror group’s operatives in Syria last summer, in an airstrike widely attributed to the IDF. The Israeli military believes Hezbollah still intends to exact revenge for the death of its fighter in order to deter Israel from future strikes.

Source:  https://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz-hezbollah-will-be-fatally-wounded-if-israel-drawn-into-a-war-in-lebanon/

The post Gantz: Hezbollah will be ‘fatally wounded’ if Israel drawn into a war in Lebanon first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Joe Biden knows Iran better than any American President since its 1979 revolution. He has personally dealt with its top officials—a few of them for decades. “When I was Iran’s representative to the U.N., I had several meetings with Biden,” the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, acknowledged after the U.S. election, in an interview with Entekhab, a Tehran publication. The two aren’t exactly friends. Their meetings “can be described as professional relations based on mutual respect,” Zarif said. But Biden does have the Iranian’s personal e-mail address, as well as his cell-phone number.

As one of his first acts on foreign policy, Biden wants to renew diplomacy with the Islamic Republic—and reёnter the nuclear accord that President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” Biden wrote, in an essay for CNN, in September. Yet the President-elect already faces a minefield over basic issues—such as, what exactly is “compliance”? Who moves first? And how? And what about all those other flashpoints not in the 2015 accord—Iran’s growing array of missiles, its proxy militias and political meddling, which have extended Tehran’s influence across the Middle East, and the regime’s flagrant human-rights abuses?

During the transition, interested parties in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East have been posturing behind the scenes in ways that already complicate the Biden team’s thinking about how to reëngage. I’ve heard from all sides—unsolicited. “This is the silly, screwy period because everyone is trying to communicate through the press or interlocutors,” a former diplomat involved in the nuclear deal told me. Meanwhile, Trump appears determined to sabotage Biden’s plans, adding layers of military and economic obstacles. In December, the Trump Administration issued new sanctions, the latest of more than a thousand. Trump also discussed U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s main nuclear installation, at Natanz. And, since November 21st, U.S. B-52 bombers have flown three show-of-force missions—thirty-six-hour flights from as far away as Louisiana and North Dakota—around the perimeter of Iranian air space. Just before Christmas, Trump again put Tehran on notice, accusing Iranian proxies of firing rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. “Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible,” he tweeted. “Think it over.”

After Biden is inaugurated, he will have only a sliver of time—six to eight weeks—to jump-start the process before the political calendar in Iran threatens to derail potential diplomacy over the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. On March 20th, Iran marks Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on the vernal equinox, and the whole country shuts down for two weeks. After the holiday, Iran’s Presidential campaign begins, culminating in a mid-June election. President Hassan Rouhani, who charted a new course by proposing diplomacy with the United States, in 2013, is not eligible to run; Iran has two-term limits. New U.S.-Iran diplomacy could become the top election issue and impact its outcome, the Tehran University political scientist Nasser Hadian told me. “If we have a very quick comeback to the J.C.P.O.A., the chances of reformists or moderates winning the next election in June is going to be very good,” Hadian said.

For Biden, there’s also a scientific urgency. When he and Barack Obama left the White House, in 2017, the “breakout” time for Iran to build a bomb was well over a year. Several safeguards had been put in place under the nuclear deal, which was brokered, in 2015, by the world’s six major powers, during intense diplomacy that featured pen-tossing, hair-pulling, shouting, a broken leg, and other dramas. The agreement was not foolproof; it involved unpopular compromises. But it provided for unprecedented human and high-tech inspections, as well as limits on the hardware and fuel needed to assemble the world’s deadliest weapon. It also forced Tehran to destroy some of its nuclear infrastructure, limit uranium enrichment, and reduce its stockpile—with the implicit threat that the world would jointly punish the Islamic Republic, through global economic sanctions or war, if it violated the terms.

When Donald Trump leaves office this month, Tehran will need only three months to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb, according to a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Iran’s weapon capabilities and existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium are now greater. Its research-and-development program—simply put, what it knows, and can’t now unknow—is more advanced. And the world has not stood together since Trump abandoned the accord, in 2018, to pursue a bigger deal that also covers the four other flashpoints. Trump failed—just as he failed to limit North Korea’s nuclear program, negotiate arms control with Russia, contain China’s economic and territorial ambitions, support Venezuela’s democratic opposition, and get Mexico to pay for a wall.

Even with a new President, however, U.S.-Iran diplomacy will still be defined by decades of mutual wariness. Long haunted by the 1979 seizure of its embassy and fifty-two hostages, Washington has been reluctant to trust Tehran’s overtures. Iran is, in turn, suspicious of American outreach, given U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, in the nineteen-eighties, including intelligence that Iraq used to deploy chemical weapons and kill tens of thousands of Iranians. Biden may feel that he can make a fresh start, but Rouhani’s team has been stewing for four years over the costs of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign—and his dismissal of the boldest Iranian diplomacy in four decades. U.S. sanctions slashed Tehran’s oil exports at one point last spring by more than ninety percent, and targeted everything from the Supreme Leader’s office to the Revolutionary Guards and the Central Bank. Iran claims that the sanctions have caused two hundred and fifty billion dollars in economic losses since 2018.

For Biden, the initial step is straightforward. After the Inauguration, he or his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, can relay their intentions through Iran’s U.N. mission or directly to its foreign ministry, Richard Nephew, a former member of the U.S. negotiating team who is now at Columbia University, told me. But it will not be a “one-and-done” scenario, Nephew said, and success will require a lot more than diplomatic Band-Aids. Biden and the Iranians “have said fundamentally similar things—compliance for compliance,” Jarrett Blanc, the State Department coördinator on implementation of the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama Administration, said. “But they will first have to figure out what compliance means. It’s not dead obvious.”

Iran claims that the U.S. has to act first—since it withdrew from the deal—and do more than offer promises. “Go back to full compliance, normalize Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world, stop making new conditions, stop making outrageous demands,” Zarif said, at the Mediterranean Dialogues, in early December. “And as soon as you come back to the letter of the J.C.P.O.A., let alone its spirit, we will immediately do that.” In a statement to the United Nations on December 22nd, Iran formally gave notice that it would roll back its breaches “as soon as all JCPOA participants start implementing their commitments unconditionally, effectively and in full.” Biden can lift sanctions with three executive orders, Zarif told an Iranian newspaper.

In broad terms, Biden wants Iran to roll back its recent breaches, especially on uranium enrichment. Iran, in turn, wants U.S. sanctions lifted so that it can sell more oil, tap into its financial assets frozen abroad, and revive an ailing economy also hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Tehran claims that it demonstrated restraint after Trump withdrew from the deal; it honored all its obligations for more than a year, as verified repeatedly in inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. After Trump began a rapid-fire sequence of tough economic sanctions and demanded new negotiations, Tehran responded with gradual breaches in a tit-for-tat strategy to pressure Washington. “Because the J.C.P.O.A. was negotiated based on mutual mistrust, we put in place a mechanism that if one side does not live up to its obligations, the other side can in fact reduce its commitments or withdraw altogether,” Zarif said in December. Iran has also responded to covert operations against its program. After the nuclear facility at Natanz was hit by a mysterious explosion, in July, which Tehran claimed was sabotage, Iran began building a new facility deep in the mountains—safer from aerial assault—to produce centrifuges.

The potential problems go deeper. Biden is under pressure to maintain Trump’s sanctions as leverage to win concessions—to expand the original nuclear deal as well as to negotiate new accords on the other flashpoints. For six months, there’s been talk among diplomats and foreign-policy pundits about a “J.C.P.O.A.-Plus,” which would amend the nuclear deal, notably the sunset clauses stipulating when Iran can resume aspects of its various weapons programs. (The sunset clause that limited Tehran’s ability to buy conventional arms for its aging arsenal expired in October. Other limitations on the nuclear program expire gradually over the next twenty years, although the deal stipulates that Iran will never build a bomb and will permanently allow inspections of declared and undeclared suspect sites.)

On December 21st, Britain, France, and Germany—which co-sponsored the original pact—added to the confusion when they warned that “just a commitment” to the deal was not enough. “We are standing at a crossroads today,” the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, said. “To make possible a rapprochement under Biden, there must be no more tactical maneuvers of the kind we have seen plenty of in recent times—they would do nothing but further undermine the agreement,” he added. “The opportunity that is now being offered—this last window of opportunity—must not be squandered.”

Iran was outraged. “Renegotiation is out of the question,” Zarif tweeted, on December 21st. Hadian, the Tehran University political scientist, who is close to top Iranian officials, told me, “The expectation of the Rouhani government is a quick return—not one word less and not one word more, not J.C.P.O.A.-Plus, not J.C.P.O.A. 2.0.”

Iran has also proffered ideas of its own that throw a spanner in the diplomatic works. It proposed that Washington lift sanctions without signing on to the original deal again. Zarif said that Biden could, instead, acknowledge U.S. commitments under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which was passed unanimously, in 2015, as a global endorsement of the accord. If Biden formally reёnters the accord, Tehran is nervous about what rights that gives any future U.S. President, notably the ability to demand that the whole world impose “snapback” sanctions.

The deal allows any one of the six powers that negotiated the deal—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S.—to call for “snapback” sanctions if it believes Iran is cheating; the other five countries automatically have to comply. The Trump Administration invoked “snapback” sanctions in September, but, because the U.S. had previously withdrawn from the deal, the other parties refused to comply. “We don’t know who is going to be President four years from now,” Hadian told me. “So we don’t want the U.S. to have the right to ‘snapback.’ ” Iran’s new position, a person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me, “adds confusion when the benefit of what Biden proposes is clarity. The Iranians are hurting their own case. It’s a bizarre interpretation and will slow everything down.”

The assassination, in November, of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, further complicates the future. Iran blamed Israel. Tehran vowed to retaliate. Last month, the State Department withdrew some U.S. diplomats from neighboring Iraq, for fear that they could be targets. “No matter what happens between now and January 20th, Biden is determined to reëngage, with one caveat, which is that Iran could take actions which would make that commitment very difficult to adhere to,” the person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me. Endangering American lives would make Biden’s return to diplomacy “difficult if not impossible.” Biden’s first responsibility will be to “defend Americans and do what he can to help America’s allies.”

Iran’s parliament, however, did retaliate. On December 2nd, it hastily passed a law that required the government to immediately begin enriching uranium to a higher grade, closer to the level needed to fuel a weapon. It also requires that Rouhani suspend international inspections if U.S. sanctions are not lifted by mid-February. On January 2nd, Iran invoked a military analogy to describe its readiness to increase enrichment to twenty percent. “We are like soldiers, and our fingers are on the triggers,” Ali Akbar Salehi, the M.I.T.-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, on national television. “The commander should command and we shoot. We are ready for this and will produce as soon as possible.” The move is still reversible if Biden acts before the sixty-day deadline. And uranium needs to be enriched to ninety percent to build a bomb.

“If, within two weeks of being President—between January 20th and no later than mid-February—Biden at least verbally says that he’s going back to the J.C.P.O.A., then Rouhani will be in a position to unconditionally return to the deal and outmaneuver everybody in Iran,” Hadian told me. “But if Biden doesn’t act, then all of Iran’s major factions will push for Iran to increase all aspects of its nuclear program, including enriching uranium to twenty percent.”

Even if Biden’s team gets an early agreement on “compliance for compliance,” the new Administration may not be able to negotiate much more until after a new Iranian President is inaugurated, in August. And then the issues only get more complex. The Pentagon is increasingly worried about Iran’s missile program, which has been pivotal to both offensive and defensive capabilities since the country’s air force was decimated during the long war with Iraq. “Over the last four years, Iran has continued to build ballistic missiles even while they’ve been under significant economic pressure,” General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., the head of U.S. Central Command, told me.

Iran has half a million men and women in uniform; it is the largest military force in the Middle East, and the fourteenth largest in the world. Yet its capabilities are limited. Missiles are “the one thing that allows them to threaten their neighbors,” McKenzie said. “They have no army they can deploy. They have no air force worthy of its name, and they have a very weak and impoverished, fractured navy. But what they do have, what they view as the crown jewel, is their ballistic-missile force.” Iran’s arsenal of missiles is “very good, and they’re getting better,” McKenzie told me. Tehran has shared many of its rockets and missiles—via the Quds Force—with proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. “It’s a problem Biden’s going to have to face,” he said.

On the eve of Biden’s Inauguration, the standoff between Washington and Tehran has grown “very tense,” McKenzie added. The dangers were palpable over New Year’s weekend, with the anniversary, on January 3rd, of the U.S. airstrike that killed General Qassem Suleimani, the Quds Force commander responsible for Iran’s military operations and proxies across the Middle East. Suleimani was a hero in Iran; billboards are plastered with his picture, honoring his “martyrdom.” A year ago, Tehran retaliated by firing missiles on an Iraqi military base that housed U.S. troops; more than a hundred Americans suffered brain injuries. The Islamic Republic has long vowed additional revenge. At a commemoration for Suleimani on New Year’s Day, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, warned that his killers would “not be safe on earth.” In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was concerned that McKenzie (who is viewed as Suleimani’s counterpart in the same theatre of operations) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Mark Milley, could be potential targets.

Any new accord—to limit Iran’s missiles and, potentially in return, the weaponry in rival Arab arsenals—will almost certainly have to include a wider array of countries. Israel and the United Arab Emirates are already lobbying to be included or have a say. Even stickier are the missiles that Iran has provided to proxies. In an end-of-year interview, the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said that the Lebanese militia had doubled its stock of precision-guided missiles over the past year. “To develop a conventional missile program is an inherent right of any country under international law, and Iran is no exception,” the Iranian U.N. Ambassador, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said, on December 22nd. “Iran will not negotiate its legitimate ballistic-missile program.” That divide, General McKenzie said, “appears to be, at least to me, intractable.”

The even harder challenge will be finding ways to address horrific human-rights abuses, which go to the heart of the unique judicial and political systems in the Islamic Republic. After his appointment as Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan tweeted scathing criticism of Tehran’s treatment of Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian living in exile who publicized information about the 2017 anti-government protests, on the messaging service Telegram. In 2019, Zam was lured to Iraq, where Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped him and returned him to Iran for trial on charges of “corruption on earth.” He was hanged in December. “Iran’s execution of Ruhollah Zam, a journalist who was denied due process and sentenced for exercising his universal rights, is another horrifying human rights violation by the Iranian regime,” Sullivan tweeted. “We will join our partners in calling out and standing up to Iran’s abuses.” The furor over Zam’s execution reflected the fundamental gap between the United States and Iran under any President. Even with Biden’s commitment to diplomacy, four years may not be enough time to achieve breakthroughs on all the flashpoints between Washington and Tehran.

The post Biden faces a minefield in new diplomacy with Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

USS Georgia transits Strait of Hormuz

DUBAI:  Some Middle East officials worry a “perfect storm” may be brewing in the Middle East as the final hours of Donald Trump’s time in office tick down. The United States and Israel have deployed new military assets in the Persian Gulf region, as Iran sends more ballistic missiles and drones to its proxy groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, increasing concerns of an imminent confrontation.

“It is like conditions are being set for the perfect storm,” said one official in the Persian Gulf region, who asked not to be identified.

The U.S. Navy announced Dec. 21 that the Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Georgia, accompanied by two other warships, entered the Arabian Gulf waters, joining the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group that was deployed to the region late last month.

“SSGNs are one of the most versatile platforms in the fleet, equipped with superior communications capabilities and the ability to carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. The platform can also be configured to host up to 66 Special Operations Forces,” reads a statement by U.S. 5th Fleet, whose command is based in Bahrain

The U.S. Air Force flew two B-52 bombers to the Middle East on Dec. 30 in the second such mission this month and the third since November. U.S. officials described the B-52 long-range flights to the Middle East as a message of deterrence to Iran.

Several regional analysts and observers have warned the military buildup could be a prelude to a plan by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to provoke Iran into a military confrontation that would free them to strike its nuclear and ballistic missile facilities and proxy militias in the region.

“These activities are more than just posturing. They are more like repositioning in preparation for something that could either be planned or anticipated,” said Mohammed Baharoon, the director-general of B’huth Center for Public Policy here. “Moving a strike group and a nuclear submarine and flying bombers repeatedly on dry runs are costly exercises and are more than delivering a message to Iran to keep away. Wolves don’t run for nothing.”

Baharoon pointed out that Israel’s decision to show and announce the sailing of a Dolphin submarine through the Suez Canal towards the Red Sea is by itself “a significant message and indication of a possible scenario in place.”

The displays of U.S. military are just days ahead of the first anniversary for the assassination of IRGC senior commander General Qassem Suleimani in a U.S. drone attack last January 3, in Baghdad. Iran has vowed to avenge the killing of its commander who was responsible for all IRGC operations abroad.

Israel is already engaged in a low-intensity conflict with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and their main allied Shiite militia the Lebanese Hezbollah, as Breaking D readers know. Israeli warplanes have launched about 40 air raids on basis and arms depots for the IRGC and Hezbollah in Syria in 2020. The last attack, in the early morning hours of Dec. 30, targeted what Syrian sources describe as a missile depot southwest of Damascus. Just few days earlier Israeli warplanes blasted installations at the “Syrian Military Research” compound in Hama province that, Syrian sources say, were used to build long-range artillery rockets and ballistic missiles based on technologies and parts supplied by Iran.

Israeli officials have repeatedly said they will not tolerate the deployment of Iranian ballistic missiles and other advanced weapons along the northern borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah asserted in a Dec. 27 interview that his group was on a full state of alert and was in possession of “highly accurate” ballistic missiles that can hit any target in Israel. “The (Iranian) precision missile project has not stopped and will not stop,” Nasrallah told pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen TV.

The region was already on tenterhooks after last month’s killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, regarded by the West as the head of the Iranian nuclear program. Iranian officials have accused Israel of killing the scientist and promised retaliation.

Some U.S. officials noted that the recent military deployments were meant to reassert continued U.S. commitment to its Middle Eastern allies even as President Trump’s administration withdrew thousands of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The deployment of the guided-missile submarine and other vessels signals the U.S. Navy’s “commitment to regional partners and maritime security,” the Navy said, displaying its readiness “to defend against any threat at any time.”

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brig. Gen. Hidai Zilberman said in an interview with a Saudi news-site on Christmas Day that Israeli intelligence has picked up signals that Iran might use its proxies in Iraq or Yemen to attack Israel with drones or ballistic missiles.

Iran and its allies have grown more alarmed by the heightened military activities. This was also reflected in the recent interview by Nasrallah, when he suggested that the Trump administration’s remaining time in office must be managed carefully, calling the outgoing US president “crazy.”

Suleimani’s successor, Gen. Esmail Ghaani made a surprise visit to Baghdad on December 23 where he met with the commanders of Iran’s proxy militias, a few days after the U.S. Embassy compound in the Iraqi capital was targeted by Katyusha rockets.

The rocket attack on Baghdad’s diplomatic Green Zone on Dec. 20 was regarded as a terrorist act by US and Iraqi government officials.

“The United States strongly condemns the latest attack by Iran-backed militias on the International Zone in Baghdad. While no Embassy personnel were harmed, the attack caused at least one Iraqi civilian casualty and damaged Iraqi civilian property,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Baharoon says he does not think all-out war is planned. “I don’t believe the U.S. or Israel want to start a war with Iran, but they could be trying to provoke a confrontation that would provide the opportunity to target Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles installations, creating a mess for President-elect Joe Biden to deal with,” Baharoon said. “But would Iran take the bait, or keep low until Biden is in office?”

Source: click here

The post Persian Gulf Buildup By US, Israel Worries Region: ‘A Perfect Storm?’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Hezbollah playing with fire: Netanyahu first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The words “sixth of October” send chills down the spine even 46 years later. Or, at least they should, assuming that the lessons of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (that started on this date) have been learned and internalized.

On Sunday, just days before yet another Yom Kippur, the political-security cabinet was to meet for the first time since the September elections (despite the endless political turmoil Israel has found itself in since the national vote) to discuss a “sensitive situation.”

Religious Israeli soldier praying (Photo: Getty Images)

At this point, it’s impossible to know whether there is actually something serious or it’s yet another political spin. Because everything feels like it’s still part of an election campaign. The bottom line is although I wish it was all a spin, I still want the issues discussed there to be serious.

There are two disturbing similarities between 1973 and 2019. The first is that there is a ruling political party that in the eyes of a sizeable chunk of the public is invincible and can get away with practically anything. The second is the fact that defense intelligence is being made public – if you only open your eyes and look closely.

Israeli troops during Yom Kippur after ceasefire was reached with Egypt (Photo: Getty Images)

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Anwar Sadat, who at the time was Egypt’s president, a year before the war described in a detailed interview to Newsweek how one and a half million Egyptian soldiers were preparing for a war that his regime could not escape.

Like Sadat, many speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah also give away his main operational objectives with regards to Israel – occupation of the Upper Galilee, accompanied by heavy rocket fire.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a televised speech (Photo: Reuters)

The alleged Iranian attack on Saudi oil fields, however, shows that Israel has spent years learning to neutralize weapons of wars we had already fought. We built anti-ballistic missile defense systems, while the Iranians were developing cruise missiles.

Although the pinnacle of our defense establishment has recorded hundreds of great accomplishments, what about the infantry or armored brigades? Will the home front cope if there’s an all-out war?

However you want to spin it, a war against Iran and its regional proxies is inevitable. According to the intelligence (which at this point has practically been made public) the war will include heavy rocket fire from Gaza, Iran (and the territory under its influence in Iraq), Syria and Lebanon – where ground battles will also be fought.

Gaza rockets over southern city of Sderot during summer festival

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Are we prepared to face a prolonged bombardment of our civilian population? Will we be able to withstand precision-missile hits that would break our morale?

Israel in 2019, just like in 1973, is a captive of its own concept. This time, however, it is a political concept: a package of fossilized perceptions about the left vs the right; ultra-Orthodox vs secular; Arabs vs Jews, that dictates who will vote for whom in the polls, and who will sit with whom in a coalition government.

Source: https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5603259,00.html

The post Is Israel facing the biggest conflict since Yom Kippur War? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

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IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, center, visits soldiers searching for Hezbollah attack tunnels on Israeli-Lebanese border on December 4, 2018. (Israel Defense Forces)

A senior Israeli minister said Friday that Israeli forces may need to go into Lebanon to deal with the newly revealed Hezbollah attack tunnels that snake under the border.

“If we think that in order to thwart the tunnels that one needs to operate on the other side, then we will operate on the other side of the border,” Israel Katz, who holds the intelligence and transport ministries told Radio Tel Aviv, according to Reuters.

Katz was reiterating a warning made Thursday by an unnamed senior Israeli official. So far, IDF forces have been working to find and destroy the tunnels from the Israeli side of the frontier only.

Intelligence and Transportation Minister Israel Katz speaks during the inauguration ceremony for the new train station in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi, on September 17, 2018. (Flash90)An IDF incursion into Lebanon would likely spark a major confrontation with Hezbollah.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Hezbollah seeks to send “entire battalions” into Israel, including via the tunnels Israel is now tackling, in order to seize land, and kidnap and kill Israelis.

Netanyahu warned that Hezbollah seeks to infiltrate “several battalions” into Israel — to seize territory, “murder and kidnap.” Hezbollah’s tunnels are “broader” than those of the Gaza-based Hamas terror group, the prime minister said.

“If you look at the Hamas tunnels, they’re very narrow, basically for one person. The Hezbollah tunnels are broad. They enable several people to come at one and also to put motorcycles, I’m pretty sure tractors and so on,” Netanyahu told a group foreign envoys as they toured the area.

This, he elaborated, was “in order to bring in many forces, simultaneously, which means several battalions into our territory, with the purpose of cutting off communities here, towns, kibbutzim, and then going into a campaign of murder and kidnapping, which could happen simultaneously.

”The senior officer who briefed reporters echoed this assessment. The cross-border tunnels “are wider and larger, and their goal is to transfer entire battalions, large forces, into Israeli territory, in order to come in and carry out killing sprees and kidnappings and to capture Israeli towns and villages,” this officer said.

Operation Northern Shield was launched earlier this week due to the fear that the details of the operation would be leaked and revealed to Hezbollah, the senior officer said.

“If Hezbollah knew that we knew [about the existence of the tunnels] then this would accelerate their kidnapping efforts, and we did not want to get to a situation where the kidnappers infiltrate into Israel and abduct a soldier or a civilian, and no one would know anything about it,” the senior official added.

The decision to embark on the operation was taken on November 7, and was one of the reasons why the cabinet decided not to launch a major military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the official added. “There were other reasons, too, but that was one of them,” he said.

Netanyahu urged the foreign diplomats to condemn and sanction the Shiite terror group for its aggressive actions.

“Israel expects an unequivocal condemnation of Hezbollah, the imposition of additional sanctions on Iran, a condemnation from the Lebanese government and a demand that it stop giving its approval for the use of its territory for these attacks against Israel,” he told the group of senior ambassadors from across the globe.

“All of this will come up at the upcoming meeting of the UN Security Council which Israel has demanded. This is an important political and diplomatic step that complements our operational and engineering effort to deny Hezbollah and Iran the tunnels weapon.”

David Quarrey@DavidQuarrey

PM Netanyahu briefed ambassadors today on the Hizballah tunnel threat. We visited tunnel site close to the Blue Line. UK condemns such tunnels as blatant and destabilizing violation of UN resolutions.

“We are systematically and decisively denying our enemies the tunnels weapon. We are doing this with Hamas, and with Hezbollah; we will do whatever is necessary,” he added.

“Anyone who attacks us — is taking his life into his hands,” he added. “Hezbollah knows this and Hamas knows that too.”

Operation Northern Shield has just begun, but at the end of it, “the tunnels weapon, in which Hezbollah has invested so much, will not exist and will not be effective.”

Netanyahu also told the ambassadors that while Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is seeking a huge arsenal of precision-guided missiles, and wanted to have thousands by now, at present he only has a few dozen highly accurate missiles in the Hezbollah arsenal, which is estimated at 100,000-plus rockets and missiles.

More than a dozen ambassadors participated in the briefing on a foggy Thursday morning, including those from the European Union, France, the UK, Russia, Hungary and Poland.

“The purpose of the ambassadors’ briefing was to receive support and legitimacy for additional actions, if they will become necessary,” the senior Israeli official said.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-minister-says-idf-may-go-into-lebanon-to-deal-with-tunnel-threat/

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ERBIL (Kurdistan) – The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Thursday asked supporters to stand by Iran, while boasting of its new “highly accurate” missiles, which, he claimed, would help the two allies shift the “regional balance of power.”

According to AP, Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanese Hezbollah, in a televised speech commemorating Ashura, a major Shia religious holy day, told supporters to “be confident in Hezbollah’s capabilities,” and in what seemed an allusion to Iranian expansionism, affirmed that the “regional balance of power has changed.”

“I tell (Israel) no matter what it did to cut the route, the matter is over,” he said, adding that Hezbollah “now possesses precision missiles and non-precision and weapons capabilities.”

On Sep. 15, alleged Israeli missile strikes targeted a cargo plane from Iran, reportedly delivering weapons in Damascus to pro-regime forces fighting in the country’s civil war, including Hezbollah.

The route mentioned by Nasrallah also suggests he was referring to Tehran’s push for a corridor straight to the Mediterranean, which the US and Israel have been attempting to block by targeting Iranian militia positions in Syria.

Indeed, the Hezbollah leader reiterated the militant group’s strong ties to Iran, calling for supporters to rally behind the Islamic republic as the November sanctions loom.

“It is our duty to stand behind Iran against the US, which is entering the next stage of sanctions,” Iran news outlet Tasnim, which has close ties to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), quoted Nasrallah as saying.

The US government has been engaged in “round-the-clock operations” to pressure Iran with sanctions, imposed a blockade on the belligerent country, and has pushed other countries to discontinue the purchase of Iranian oil, he asserted.

“Iran is being punished for fighting America’s domination and refusing to be a slave to the US.”

Despite calls by its own people to desist from costly external operations in regional conflicts, Iran continues to supports its proxies in Syria and Iraq, while recent reports claim Tehran has transferred ballistic missiles to allied Shia militias.

Iran’s malign activities in the Middle East are a matter of increasing US concern.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R, Texas), head of the Committee on Homeland Security and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, this week called for designating the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, explaining that the IRGC was expanding into Iraq, as well as Syria, and manufacturing rockets in Lebanon to be used by Hezbollah.

Editing by Laurie Mylroie

Source: http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/603233ef-484e-4f50-9f35-30cea1e92d11

The post Hezbollah rallies behind Iran ahead of new sanctions, boasts new missiles first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The first leader to exploit claims that Saudi Arabia is trying to push Israel into a new military confrontation in Lebanon is also the most devoted reader of Israeli and foreign news reports – Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

In a speech broadcast Friday on Lebanese television, Nasrallah claimed that the Saudis had declared war on Lebanon and Hezbollah, and warned Israel not to intervene lest it pay a heavy price.

To viewers in Israel, Nasrallah seemed unusually stressed, and his tone sounded almost plaintive. His concerns about future Israeli moves didn’t match his past swaggering declarations in which he described Israeli society as a flimsy “spiderweb” that would collapse under Arab pressure. It seems the crisis created by the Saudis in Lebanon, with the forced resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, caught the Hezbollah chief off guard.

Nasrallah isn’t the only leader who seems to have slid into something now over his head. The Saudi gamble is a big one and there’s no guarantee that the kingdom’s aggressive stance will end in success, despite the enthusiastic support of U.S. President Donald Trump. In a statement, the State Department was much less enthusiastic. It called for Hariri to be restored to his post and warned other countries – namely Iran, but also Saudi

The Washington Post has provided extensive details on Hariri’s resignation; it emerges that Hariri indeed served as a Saudi puppet. The resignation letter was dictated to him at a morning meeting in the royal palace, to which he had been summoned unexpectedly. He was later transferred to a villa in the Ritz-Carlton compound in Riyadh, in which Saudi princes and tycoons are being held following this month’s purge. There, Hariri is under the surveillance of the Saudi security services.

Israel, other than a public verbal assault on Iran a week ago, isn’t commenting on Hariri’s resignation. No official has responded to accusations that this was a Saudi-Israeli move against Iran and Hezbollah. And no steps have been taken to increase vigilance along the northern border, which would have suggested that the Israel Defense Forces was preparing something.

For now, it seems it’s the Saudis who may seek such a scenario, while Israel has no interest in a military confrontation. One should note that Saudi Arabia has counted on Israeli military action twice in the past, first hoping that Israel would attack Iran’s nuclear installations, and then counting on the IDF’s intervention against the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. Both times it was disappointed, but vigorous Saudi actions are fueling tensions in an arena where Israel and Hezbollah are often only two mutual missteps away from war.

The Saudis’ steps were received with some surprise by Israeli defense officials and with even greater surprise by cabinet members who don’t follow the minutiae of daily developments. The basic regional instability, the number of players involved and the fast pace of events make it hard for analysts to forecast a few steps ahead.

Still, there may be deeper causes for the surprise afflicting the Israeli side, such as the procrastination in defining intelligence priorities and the intense focus in recent years on collecting operational intelligence at the expense of analyzing long-term processes.

The Syrians get bold
On Saturday morning, an Israeli Patriot missile shot down a drone that entered the demilitarized zone, contravening the separation agreement with Syria after the Yom Kippur War. The IDF believes it was a Syrian drone that was shot down only after the hotline with the Russians was used, to verify that it wasn’t a Russian one.

According to initial assessments, the Syrians sent the drone to gather intelligence on Israel and test the rules of the game along the border. This has been a recurring event recently, stemming from the Assad regime’s rising confidence after the stabilization it has achieved in the civil war and after the routing of the Islamic State by the U.S.-led coalition.

In a strong statement, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel held the Syrian regime responsible for every firing incident or any infringement of Israeli sovereignty along the border. He called on Assad to restrain all groups operating in his territory, saying that Israel would not allow “the consolidation of a Shi’ite axis in Syria that would constitute a forward position” for Iran.

This follows Israel’s threats to foil Iranian military moves in Syria. It also follows the BBC’s publishing of satellite photos showing, according to Western intelligence agencies, Iran establishing a permanent military base near Damascus.

Meanwhile, at a summit in Vietnam, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the American-Russian-Jordanian agreement following the partial cease-fire in southern Syria. According to the agreement, there will now be a reduction and later a withdrawal of foreign combatants from the region.

For Israel, this is a positive declaration, but it must be backed by details and action. For now it seems Iran has no intention to leave Syria or withdraw militias linked to it.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.822185

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