By Amelie Botbol and David Isaac
Iran is worried about a direct attack by Israel against its strategic sites in the near future, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported on Sunday.
The Iranians have reached this conclusion due to a series of events, including Israel’s agreement to a ceasefire with the Tehran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon. Iran’s leadership has interpreted this move as being intended to free up Israel to concentrate on the Islamic Republic directly, according to the report.
Two other events played into their conclusion: Israel’s elimination of Iranian air defense systems in October, and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
Israel wants to do everything it can to prevent Iran from returning to Syria and Lebanon, and the Iranians are already investing money and resources in doing so, according to Channel 12.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told JNS at a faction meeting of his Religious Zionism Party that “more and more arms” of Iranian origin have been used to attack the Jewish state over the past year.
“We need to act against the head of the snake, which is the Iranian regime itself, and his intention to destroy the State of Israel. And that’s what we will do,” said Smotrich.
Benny Gantz, leader of the opposition National Unity Party and a former member of the War Cabinet, told JNS on Monday that Israel should take “all the necessary means” to defend itself against the Iranian threat.
He stressed the importance for the entire Middle East to rally against Tehran’s malign influence as it is both a regional and global challenge.
“The fact is that Saudi Arabia was hit by the Iranians, whether directly or through the Houthis—before this current war started—and they were attacked many, many times,” said Gantz.
“We defend ourselves, but the world should do something about it. This is a great opportunity, due to the war and its developments, to do something about Iran,” he added.
The Houthis in Yemen came up for discussion in an Israeli Security Cabinet meeting on Sunday. The Iranian proxy has stepped up missile launches against Israel, to the point of upsetting the Iranians. They are no longer acting as a classic proxy, according to the report.
The Houthis have advanced weapons that include cruise and surface-to-surface missiles, as well as drones. These assets are spread out over large areas and are difficult to reach, making it challenging for Israel to create a bank of targets, according to Channel 12.
Multiple Houthi missiles have hit Tel Aviv and its environs in recent days, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to promise the Israeli public that the terror group would be dealt with.
“Just as we have acted forcefully against the terror arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so too will we act against the Houthis,” he said on Sunday.
Mossad chief calls to target Iran in response to Houthi attacks
Mossad Director David Barnea is advocating for an Israeli strike on Iran in response to attacks on Israel carried out by the Houthis, a Yemen-based proxy of Tehran, according to a Sunday report in Ynet.
Officials familiar with recent high-level meetings said that Barnea argued that Jerusalem should “go for the head, Iran.”
“We need to attack Iran, unrelated to the Houthis,” Yisrael Beitenu Party head Avigdor Liberman said in response to a question by JNS on Monday. The Israeli opposition politician stressed that it is no longer possible to wait, citing the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s warnings that the Islamic Republic is quickly approaching the nuclear threshold.
“I do not want a nuclear Iran. And remember what [former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani said at the time, that the State of Israel is a one-bomb state,” said Liberman.
Regarding the Houthis, he urged the Israeli government to “establish contact with all other actors in Yemen, and the official government, by the way, does not sit in Sanaa, but in Aden.
“In addition, we can mark more than a hundred targets in Houthi-controlled territory, which simply need to be eliminated,” he said, naming missiles, energy facilities and other terrorist infrastructures as examples.
Likud Party lawmaker Dan Illouz charged that “it’s clear that Iran is and will remain a problem, even if we defeat all of its proxies.”
However, “proxies were only one of the strategies that Iran used,” Illouz said in a conversation with JNS on Monday. “We also know that Iran is building nuclear weapons.”
“When we look at Oct. 7, and we see what Iran’s proxies did without nuclear weapons, we can only imagine what would happen if Iran gets nuclear weapons, and that’s something we cannot ignore,” he explained, referencing the Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to Illouz, “this problem will need to be addressed, and we have an opportunity now” due to the weakening of Hamas and Lebanon-based Hezbollah, as well as the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria.
“We have a weakened Iran, and, on the other hand, we have a Trump administration that will come in. And I just want to remind you that Iran reportedly tried to assassinate Trump, and Trump isn’t the type of person that forgets such a thing,” he stated.
