Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday evening that Iran is seeking to develop a significant store of precision-guided weapons and have already begun placing such weapons in Yemen, where they threaten to strike Israel.
The Israeli based TPS news web site reported that Netanyahu made the statement at a press conference ahead of his meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. Netanyahu welcomed Mnuchin to his office, and said he can’t count many visits Mnuchin has made to Israel since he took office. “Our relationship and our alliance has never been stronger,” he told Mnuchin.
Netanyahu also met with Trump’s senior adviser, Jared Kushner, as well as US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Deputy Assistant to the US President Avi Berkowitz. Israel’s National Security Council Director Meir Ben-Shabbat and Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer also attended the meeting.
TPS reported that Netanyahu congratulated President Trump for the operation against ISIS leader al-Baghdadi. However, he warned that the battle against terrorism is ongoing, and that Iran has malicious plans across the entire Middle East.
“Iran wants to develop precision-guided missiles that can hit any target in Israel within five to 10 meters. Iran wants to use Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen as bases to attack Israel with statistical missiles and precision-guided missiles. That is a great, great danger. To ward off this danger, we have to do two things. First we must unite, because in the face of danger, we unite,” Netanyahu said.
But at a meeting Sunday between Israel’s longtime leader and his chief political rival Benny Gantz, unity remained elusive. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin has tasked Gantz with trying to form a government after Netanyahu failed to do so after two inconclusive elections this year, according to a VOA report.
Netanyahu thanked Mnuchin and Trump for their efforts to curb Iran’s terror schemes, primarily through military assistance to Israel and the strengthening of financial sanctions against Iran, according to the TPS report.
“Iran is the single greatest threat to stability and peace in the Middle East,” Netanyahu warned, citing the Iranian attack on Saudi oil fields and British oil tankers at sea.
“They fired into Saudi Arabia. They’ve interfered with international shipping lanes. They’ve attacked Americans and they’ve killed Americans throughout the last ten years in Afghanistan and elsewhere,” he added, as was reported by TPS.
Mnuchin said the economic sanctions have worked so far and more will be imposed, if needed, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, as was reported by VOA.
“We are not doing this to hurt the people of Iran. We are doing this so that Iran stops their bad activities and exporting terrorism, looking to create nuclear capabilities, and missiles,” he said. “And we will continue to ramp up more, more, more, as you said.”
The U.S. delegation did not meet with Palestinian leaders during this visit to the region. The Palestinians ruled out any talks with U.S. officials after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Mnuchin pledged Monday to increase sanctions against Iran, saying the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” is halting alleged Iranian aggression in the Middle East, according to the VOA report.
Israel considers Iran its greatest threat, citing Iran’s support for hostile proxy groups, its development of long-range missiles and its military presence in neighboring Syria, according to a VOA report. It also accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons and frequently attacks Iranian targets in Syria. It is believed that Israel has expanded its strikes into Lebanon and Iraq in recent months.
VOA reported that at a joint press conference, Netanyahu said Iran’s ability to project power in the region “is diminished to the extent that you can tighten your sanctions and make the availability of cash more difficult for them.”
Later Monday, Netanyahu also claimed that Iran is trying to place precision-guided missiles throughout the region, including Yemen, with the aim of harming Israel.
“Iran wants to use Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen as bases to attack Israel,” he told a gathering of Jewish leaders from abroad, according to a VOA report.
The U.S. withdrew last year from the international nuclear deal with Iran and has already imposed a series of sanctions on Iran’s vital oil industry.
The sanctions limit Iran’s ability to sell oil abroad and have crippled the country’s economy. In response, Iran announced earlier this year that it would no longer comply with the nuclear deal’s restrictions.
VOA reported that Mnuchin’s visit to Israel is the first stop on a tour of the Middle East and India to discuss economic ties and counterterrorism initiatives.
He was joined by Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who met with Netanyahu and his key rival, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz.
Kushner is the chief architect of the Trump administration’s still-unreleased Mideast peace plan. Kushner has not said when the plan will be unveiled.
On Tuesday, Israeli fighter jets shot down a drone that was flying at an “irregular altitude” over the Gaza Strip, according to an Israel Defense Forces statement.
The military said fighter jets were scrambled when the aircraft was detected and they shot it down.
“An unmanned aircraft flying was detected flying at an irregular altitude over the Gaza Strip. IDF fighter jets were sent toward it and they intercepted it,” the army said in a statement. It was not immediately clear who was operating the drone.
AP reported that Gaza’s ruling Islamic terror group Hamas operates a drone program believed to receive assistance from Iran.
Hamas’ drones have mostly been used for reconnaissance along the border with Israel. Israel has acknowledged intercepting at least three unmanned craft over Gaza in recent months.
AP reported that in September, Israel said a drone from Gaza dropped explosives on an army vehicle near the perimeter fence dividing Gaza from Israel. The military hit several Hamas-affiliated targets in response.
Also on Tuesday, AP reported that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned his post; acquiescing to one of the central demands of anti-government demonstrators shortly after baton-wielding Hezbollah supporters terrorized the main protest camp in Beirut, torching tents, smashing plastic chairs and chasing away protesters.
The demonstrators later returned to the camp in time to hear the news that Hariri said he was stepping down after hitting a “dead end” in trying to resolve the crisis, which has paralyzed the country for nearly two weeks. The protesters erupted in cheers at the news, according to the AP report.
AP reported that the Hezbollah rampage marked a violent turning point in Lebanon’s protests, which have called for the resignation of the government and the overthrow of the political class that has dominated the country since the 1975-1990 civil war. The government is dominated by factions allied with Hezbollah, the money-maundering, narcotics-trafficking terror organization that represents the most powerful armed group in the country.
Hariri had reluctantly worked with those factions as part of a national unity government that had failed to address an increasingly severe economic and fiscal crisis.
In yet another development, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has “increased its pace of preparations” for confrontation, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi told journalists on Wednesday, according to a JPost report. “On both the northern and southern fronts the situation is tense and fragile and deteriorate into a confrontation,” he said.
In response, Israel has increased their defenses. JPost reported that the IDF has also published its new multi-year plan for the military. The “Momentum” plan aims to make it deadlier, faster and better trained to go up against the threats facing it and plans to procure a significant amount of precision guided missiles and mid-sized drones as well as additional air defense batteries using money from the $3.8 billion a year Israel receives from the United States every year under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding.
In other developments, it has been reported that in the aftermath of the US Special Ops raid on the compound in northwestern Syria where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed, senior ISIS leaders in Syria are coming under fire. It is part of what appears to be an urgent campaign to gut the terror group’s brain trust, as was reported by VOA news.
The U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, (also known in common parlance as the Kurdish fighters) played a significant role in helping to permanently neutralize al-Baghdadi and ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir. They said on Monday that it had carried out a series of raids aimed at getting the terror group’s key players dead or alive, according to a VOA report.
“Another successful raid targeting & arresting senior ISIS members,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali tweeted, using an acronym for the terror group which is also known as ISIS or by its Arabic acronym, Daesh.
Word of ongoing operations against the terror group came shortly after a senior State Department official praised the SDF with playing a “key role” in enabling the U.S. raid on Baghdadi’s compound in Bashira, Syria, which led to the ISIS leader’s death, according to the VOA report.
The official also confirmed SDF claims that its forces had killed the ISIS spokesman in a separate operation Sunday in the town of Jarablus, near the Syrian border with Turkey.
Pentagon officials denied any involvement in the strike, in which a second ISIS fighter was killed and a third was captured, though the State Department said U.S. assets were involved.
Earlier Monday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper lauded the raid that killed Baghdadi as a “devastating blow for the remnants of ISIS” and promised that the U.S. would continue to be in close contact with the SDF, according to a VOA report.
“Baghdadi’s death will not rid the world of terrorism or end the ongoing conflict in Syria,” Esper said while briefing reporters. “But it will certainly send a message to those who would question America’s resolve.”
Relations between the U.S. and the mainly Kurdish SDF have been strained since Trump ordered forces to withdraw from parts of northeastern Syria earlier this month. Once the U.S. troops began to vacate key outposts near the Syrian-Turkish border, Turkey launched an assault targeting the Kurds, many of whom it views as terrorists with links to groups inside Turkey.
But SDF officials Monday said that cooperation with the U.S. in the weeks and months leading up to the raid on Baghdadi’s compound in Idlib province had been intense, though the Turkish incursion caused the operation to be delayed by more than a month, according to the VOA report.
Also on Tuesday, it was reported that far left wing 2020 presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) suggested at the J Street Conference that if he were elected as the nation’s commander in chief, he would most definitely withhold military aid to Israel unless they meet demands that he is expected to make of them; particularly in reference to the issue of Palestinian statehood.
“I would use the leverage of $3.8 billion. It is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government, or for that matter to any government at all. We have a right to demand respect for human rights and democracy,” he said.
Sanders added that Netanyahu’s government “has been racist.”
In response, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley tweeted, “Just when you thought Bernie Sanders couldn’t get any more radical, he outdid himself. He wants to take money we give to Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and give it to Gaza, which is run by terrorists?? Unreal. Why isn’t every other Dem pres candidate saying he’s wrong?”
Haley remains one of Israel’s strongest defenders at the UN. In her tenure, she berated her fellow members for their biased, anti-Israel resolutions and promised them that the U.S. would not forget how they turned their back on America’s Middle East ally, according to a report on the Townhall web site.
