President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday told his French counterpart that Israel could be forced to strike the Hezbollah terror group’s rocket-building operations ‘in the heart of Beirut,’ a development he warned would drag Lebanon into a punishing regional war that neither side wants.
After confirming that Israel bombed an Iranian weapons depot in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that the Jewish state will strike even harder if it proves necessary to prevent Iran from gaining a military foothold in Syria.
The Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad has committed to spark an escalation on the southern front if Israel enters a military conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah on the north, said the Palestinian faction’s leader, Ziad Nakhala, in an interview to the state-owned Iranian TV channel Al-Alam.
A Fars Air Qeshm cargo 747 airliner left Tehran at 8 a.m. on Sunday and landed in Damascus at 10:30 a.m., returning to Tehran at 5 p.m. The 747 allegedly transported weapons to Hezbollah in September, according to a report from Fox News that was based on Western intelligence assessments. The aircraft also made suspicious flights in July and August to Damascus and Beirut.
The IDF announced on Wednesday it had detected and destroyed a fifth tunnel dug by Hezbollah under the Israel-Lebanon border.
The UN peacekeeping force on the Israel-Lebanon border said Monday that two of four tunnels allegedly dug by Hezbollah crossed the demarcation line between the two countries in violation of a UN resolution that ended the 2006 war.
President Reuven Rivlin told Israel Defense Forces soldiers Sunday that the Hezbollah terror group will drag Lebanon into war with Israel, ‘ultimately leading to [Lebanon’s] destruction.’
The IDF announced on Monday the discovery of a fourth cross-border Hezbollah attack tunnel which infiltrated into northern Israel from Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s missile arsenal has been static for years and the organization lacks the industrial ability to convert, upgrade or produce precision weapons, Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Tamir Heyman said Tuesday.
Israel’s military announced that a third Hezbollah tunnel was unearthed on Tuesday, just hours after dozens of close-up pictures and videos of IDF troops taking part in Operation Northern Shield were released by Hezbollah including a map indicating where Israel’s military is currently operating.
The entire State of Israel is within range of Hezbollah’s missiles, the group’s deputy secretary-general Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Sunday.
The Israeli Army on Sunday urged residents of two Lebanese border towns to evacuate their homes, telling them that the Hezbollah terrorist group had put them in danger by digging attack tunnels, from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, which the IDF is currently working to destroy.
Israel will submit a protest to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the president of the Security Council, which this month is held by Cote d’Ivoire, against aggressive actions emanating from Lebanon, the Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday, soon after the IDF operation to destroy Hezbollah terror tunnels began.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is believed to have taken a warning to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Brussels on Monday for him to deliver to Lebanon: Stop Hezbollah’s efforts to get precision guided missiles, or Israel will do so.
The IDF on Tuesday uncovered the first cross-border Hezbollah tunnel from a home in the Lebanese village of Kfar Kila some 40 meters into Israeli territory outside the town of Metulla, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced in a statement Tuesday.
An Iranian cargo plane allegedly transporting advanced weaponry to the Hezbollah terror group was spotted flying directly from Tehran to Beirut on Thursday morning, hours before Israel allegedly conducted airstrikes on pro-Iranian targets in Syria.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed the US and Israel in a speech to Muslim leaders on Sunday at an international conference in Tehran. He accused the ‘world’s arrogant powers’ – which he said are led by ‘the Great Satan’ – of wilting in the face of a rising Islamic awakening in the Middle East. ‘The Zionist regime is much weaker than before,’ he claimed, pointing to what he said were Israeli defeats at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and Palestinians in Gaza in 2009.
Washington will focus on pressuring Iran financially and contesting its activities in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, where the Islamic republic enjoys broad influence, the U.S. envoy to Syria said Wednesday, adding that Tehran should eventually withdraw all Iran-commanded forces from Syria.
Israel has reportedly sent a message to the Lebanese government via Paris demanding that it act against the Hezbollah terror group’s rocket factories in the country, saying if Lebanon refused to do so, Israel could take military action.
Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but ‘more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated,’ and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss what role, if any, they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday.