Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has told Israel that Moscow has agreed to expand a buffer zone along the Israeli-Syrian border, where Iranian and Hezbollah forces will not be allowed to enter.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, that Israel will take action against Iran and its proxies if they continue to entrench themselves along the Syrian border.
Israel’s defense minister says the Hezbollah militant group controls Lebanon’s army.
U.S. officials elevated their public condemnation of Hezbollah on Tuesday, adding two of the Iran-backed terror group’s top operatives to a special State Department most-wanted list and asserting that all of the group’s factions — even those holding political office in Lebanon — are part of the same terrorist operation.
Israel’s defense minister said on Tuesday President Bashar al-Assad was winning Syria’s civil war and urged the United States to weigh in as Damascus’s Iranian and Hezbollah allies gain ground.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that he would not be prepared to accept Hamas keeping its armed forces in Gaza like Hezbollah does in Lebanon and demanded ‘full control’ of the Strip, including over the border, security and all the ministries.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Sunday of pushing the region to war in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and said nowhere in Israel would be safe if such a conflict were to erupt.
Israeli officials believe that Iran is winning its bid for dominance in the Middle East, and they are mobilizing to counter the regional realignment that threatens to follow. The focus of Israel’s military and diplomatic campaign is Syria. Israeli jets have struck Hezbollah and Syrian regime facilities and convoys dozens of times during Syria’s civil war, with the goal of preventing the transfer of weapons systems from Iran to Hezbollah. In an apparent broadening of the scope of this air campaign, on Sept. 7 Israeli jets struck a Syrian weapons facility near Masyaf responsible for the production of chemical weapons and the storing of surface-to-surface missiles.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will make his first official visit to Israel in mid-October to discuss the Jewish State’s ongoing concerns regarding Iran’s presence in Syria.
Israeli warplanes early on Friday morning struck a Hezbollah weapons convoy outside Damascus, Arabic-language media outlets reported.
Hezbollah has more than 10,000 fighters in southern Syria ready to confront Israel, a commander for the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group has said.
The Israel Defense Forces shot down an Iranian-made drone operated by Hezbollah on Tuesday afternoon after the drone entered the demilitarized zone along the border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights. The Israel Air Force’s aerial defense command fired a Patriot missile and destroyed the drone.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lay out a comprehensive case against Iran in his upcoming speech at the United Nations, ‘connecting the dots’ between the nuclear deal and Tehran’s desire to establish itself militarily on Israel’s northern border, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said Sunday.
Deep in the rugged hills close to the Israeli border, two Hezbollah fighters crouched near a small fire, which heated a teapot. Despite the late-summer sun, they were both wearing full face masks to disguise their identity, because Hezbollah forbids its members from speaking with foreign reporters.
Russia has urged Syrian President Bashar Assad not to retaliate against Israel after an airstrike on the country’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, which the Syrian regime attributes to Israel, a senior Russia official dealing with Middle East affairs told Yedioth Ahronoth in an conversation in Moscow over the weekend.
In the event of another war with Hezbollah, the IDF’s objective would be to occupy parts of southern Lebanon where the group has support and infrastructure and to force a UN resolution that improves the security situation on the northern border, a senior IDF officer said on Monday.
The Northern Command began the next stage of its wide-scale training exercise in the Western and Lower Galilee on Monday, conducting offensive maneuvers in a simulation of an all-out war against the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah.
Russia has reportedly reassured Israel that it will not allow Iran and its Hezbollah proxy to threaten the Jewish state from Syria, where Moscow is fighting alongside Tehran and the Lebanese terror group on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The U.S. military is keeping a wary eye on Iran’s most violent proxy militia in Iraq, which has vowed to start killing Americans again once the Islamic State is expelled.
Israel launched an aerial attack on Assad posts in Syria overnight, hit a scientific research center where chemical weapons are manufactured and killed two Syrian soldiers, Arab media reported Thursday morning.