The Israeli military this week conducted a massive exercise simulating war against the Hezbollah terror group — its largest drill in two years — in a first test of army chief Aviv Kohavi’s new strategy for the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel is holding its first drills with US-purchased F-35 fighter jets this week, in a large-scale exercise designed to simulate a war with northern adversaries Hezbollah, Syria, and Russia.
For the first time, Israel’s advance F-35 fighter aircraft — called the ‘Adir’ — participated in a combat simulation, Ynet reported on Tuesday.
While few expect the advisors’ meeting this month in Jerusalem to produce immediate results, American and Israeli officials hope that it could prepare the ground for a deal that would further weaken Russian ties to Iran and reduce, if not terminate, Iran’s presence in Syria.
‘The Israel Defense Force will continue and intensify its covert and overt efforts to thwart Hezbollah’s desire to undermine Israel’s security,’ GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Amir Baram said Tuesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said Israel was carrying out pre-emptive attacks to prevent its ‘enemy’ from establishing military bases ‘in our vicinity,’ in an apparent acknowledgment of a strike earlier in the day on alleged Hezbollah facilities across the border in Syria.
Just months after signing on to the Iran nuclear deal, authorities in London reportedly discovered that an Iran-linked group was stockpiling tons of the same explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that his Shi’ite organization has enough precision missiles to hit all the targets it has marked throughout the State of Israel.
The rockets fired at Mount Hermon on Saturday are an indication as to what Iran is trying to push Syria to become: a testing ground for experiments in the battle against Israel and the United States, with the help of the pro-Iranian militias it has established there.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday that the day was ‘fast approaching’ when a US-backed ‘plot’ would aim to keep Palestinian refugees in Lebanon permanently. He said there was a need to work towards joint ‘Palestinian-Lebanese’ resistance, according to Al-Mayadeen and other sites that followed the speech. He was speaking on the occasion of Liberation Day in Lebanon which commemorates the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000.
Israel on Tuesday condemned a top UN official for meeting with a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon.
In the event of war with the United States, Iran ‘will not be alone.’
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton says a carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln recently deployed to the Persian Gulf is “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Monday claimed Israel’s ground forces were unprepared for a military offensive in Lebanon and the Jewish state could no longer win battles solely from the air.
The U.S. government on Monday offered a $10 million reward for information leading to a financial disruption to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah warned top military commanders in a private meeting this week that there will be a war with Israel this summer and that he may not be around to support them, according to Elijah J. Magnier, a writer for the Kuwaiti Al Rai news.
The new commander of the IDF’s Ground Forces said Thursday the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah was still planning to carry out a surprise invasion of northern Israel, despite the recent Israeli operation to uncover and destroy an extensive network of cross-border attack tunnels dug by the Iran-backed militia.
A number of Iranian forces were reportedly killed in an airstrike on a Syrian military position near the city of Masyaf in western Hama province overnight Friday-Saturday. Syrian state media said Israeli jets carried out the raid in the middle of the night, firing missiles while flying in Lebanese airspace.
US President Donald Trump on Monday formally recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, saying the dramatic shift in American policy will help Israel defend itself against regional threats.
On his weekend visit to Lebanon, which he portrayed beforehand as ‘cleaning up for what the previous administration failed to do,’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeatedly and unequivocally spoke out against Hezbollah and the Shi’ite terrorist group’s sponsor, Iran.