Free Republic

The past year was very good security-wise. The low number of attacks and victims gave Israelis a relatively high feeling of security, and the intensive focus on coronavirus (and elections) pushed aside other issues that in normal times would have made headlines. But the security challenges are here to stay. The new government, when it is formed, will not be able to avoid them, and top of the list is Iran. Behind the scenes, preparations are already underway for these marathon discussions, which take place mainly within the IDF, and specifically in the new unit formed last year to deal...

Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Thursday said the Israel Defense Forces is continuously updating its plans for a prospective military strike on Iranian nuclear sites. Gantz, in an interview with Fox News, said the military plans would not be finalized until right before such a strike was set to be carried out. “If the world stops them [Iran] before, it’s much the better. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves,” added the defense minister. Israel has twice conducted military strikes against the nuclear programs of its enemies — Iraq in 1981 and Syria...

Who is really running the country? Kamala Harris on Thursday spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as Joe Biden slouched around the White House. Joe Biden hosted a group of House members at the White House on Thursday and joined a virtual call with NASA. Apparently Biden’s schedule was so grueling today that he had to have his babysitter Kamala take another call with a foreign leader. Kamala Harris, in a phone call with Netanyahu, “emphasized the United States’ unwavering commitment to Israel’s security.” Harris and Netanyahu also agreed to advance Covid cooperation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday spoke to US Vice President Kamala Harris, with the conversation focusing on the pandemic, the Iranian nuclear program, and the International Criminal Court’s decision to open an investigation into Israel over alleged war crimes, his office said. The call, the first between them since the inauguration, came a day after the ICC announced it would investigate Israel and Palestinian terror groups over alleged war crimes and as the Biden administration seeks to reenter the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu’s office said Harris “expressed the total opposition of the American administration to the decision by the...

Report: In Devastating Blow, Israel Sets Back Iran's Nuke Program Two YearsThe last couple of weeks have seen a string of apparent sabotage incidents in Iran. Questions about them abound. Possible answers are intriguing to say the least. Probably the most significant attack came early Thursday morning at Natanz, when, as the New York Times reported:...A Middle Eastern intelligence official…said the blast was caused by an explosive device planted inside the facility. The explosion, he said, destroyed much of the aboveground parts of the facility where new centrifuges…are balanced before they are put into operation…. ... ... Instead, Iran appears...

Over the past several weeks, a series of "mystery explosions" has happened at very strategically sensitive locations inside Iran, and it has become obvious that what we are witnessing is not just a bunch of random accidents. For years, the Israeli government has pledged that the Iranians will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, and several of the sites where the mystery explosions have taken place have direct connections to Iran's nuclear program. For example, there was a very large explosion at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility on July 2nd, and it is being reported that some officials believe...

World War 3 fears were sparked this week after Israel hit the Syrian capital of Damascus early on Monday as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran's presence there. In response, Iran issued a chilling message to arch-enemy Israel – warning it is “impatient” and ready to confront and destroy the nation in a statement issued just hours after Israel launched the air raids in Syria. The former Pentagon official Michael Maloof has warned the situation between the two states is getting “quickly out of hand” due to the “intensified Israeli attacks”. Mr Maloof told RT America: “You have...

TEL AVIV — The Mossad agents moving in on a warehouse in a drab commercial district of Tehran knew exactly how much time they had to disable the alarms, break through two doors, cut through dozens of giant safes and get out of the city with a half-ton of secret materials: six hours and 29 minutes... The agents arrived that night, Jan. 31, with torches that burned at least 3,600 degrees, hot enough, as they knew from intelligence collected during the planning of the operation, to cut through the 32 Iranian-made safes... In late April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced...

Iranian forces in Syria did not ask the Syrian government, or even notify Syrian leaders, before launching 20 missiles at Israel just after midnight on Thursday, Fox News reported. “It appears that the regime of Bashar Assad of Syria wants to distance itself from Iran’s military activity in its very own back yard,” Fox News’s David Lee Miller reported from the Golan Heights on Thursday. Miller said that Fox News had learn from European sources that, “The Iranian major general in charge of the Al-Quds Force in Syria, Qassem Soleimani, launched last night’s attack against Israel without the knowledge or...

Israel exchanged rocket and cruise missile fire with Iranian forces deployed inside Syria during an hours-long battle late Wednesday, the biggest direct confrontation between the two countries since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Responding to a barrage of rockets reportedly fired by Iranian troops at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked nearly all of Iran’s military installations in Syria, an IDF spokesman said, according to the Associated Press. Targets included a weapons storage facility, logistics sites and intelligence centers used by the Quds Force, the special operations division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Also destroyed...

Iran launched dozens of rockets at Israel yesterday, causing little damage thanks to the “Iron Dome” system Israel employs for just such occasions. In retaliation, Israel launched a wide-ranging military strike on Iranian assets in Syria. It might have looked proportional at first, but it has now become apparent that Israel has decided to reduce Iran’s ability to operate effectively in Syria at all:

The Israeli parliament late on Monday granted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greater authority to take his country to war, at a time when tensions between Israel and Iran are reaching new heights. Netanyahu can now declare war with only the approval of the defence minister, currently hardliner Avigdor Lieberman, in "extreme situations", according to Israeli daily Haaretz. Previously the prime minister would need the approval of the entire Israeli cabinet in order to declare war. The news of the Israeli parliament’s decision emerged following a 20-minute presentation in which Netanyahu accused Iran of continuing to pursue its nuclear weapons programme...

reports that since Monday midday, columns of IDF tank-hauling trucks have been seen heading north along the national Highways...

BREAKING: IDF sources said to confirm Iran has established air forces in Syria and are planning retaliatory attacks in Israel.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday ahead of a planned Russian withdrawal from Syria. Rivlin conveyed to the Russian leader Israel's concerns about Iranian activity in Syria, and the active role the Hezbollah terror group has assumed in the Syrian civil war. The Israeli leader also touched on the future status of the Golan Heights, which Syria continues to claim as sovereign territory, despite Israel's annexation of the area in 1981. Rivlin reportedly told Putin that borders of both Syria and Iraq were arbitrarily drawn during the First World War, and...

Iran did not go mad and threaten to hit all NATO installations in Turkey because it wanted 3.5 million Turkish citizens to die from the chemical warhead of a Syrian missile. It went mad and threatened because it viewed the defensive NATO assets in Turkey as a threat to its offensive missile capabilities. Iran's reaction to the NATO assets in Turkey revealed its intentions to attack. It could be a coincidence that the U.S. and Germany (most likely to be followed by Spain) have decided to withdraw their Patriot missile batteries and troops from Turkey shortly after agreeing to a...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's political leaders pushed to attack Iran at least three times in the past few years but had to back down on the advice of the military and due to concerns about its ally the United States, former defense minister Ehud Barak said. In interviews to his biographers aired late on Friday by Israel's Channel Two, Barak said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wanted military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Israel has regularly hinted it could attack Iran to stop it getting nuclear weapons, something Teheran denies it is seeking....

Maj. Gen. Nimrod Sheffer, the head of the Israel Defense Forces Planning Directorate, told Israel Hayom in a weekend interview that when Israeli leaders say “all options are on the table” with regard to Iran, they mean it. “If someone builds a nuclear bomb and at the same time declares that the State of Israel has no right to exist, then we have to think about how to respond,” he said. “It goes beyond a simple challenge." When asked if Israel might take “dramatic steps” in defiance of the American position, Sheffer answered positively: "When it comes to our national...

Destroyed warehouses allegedly stockpiled weapons purchased by Iran for Hamas An Israeli air force jet allegedly bombed warehouses in Libya placed in a small airfield in the south of the country, according to Arab media citing unnamed Libyan security sources. According to the reports, the warehouses, which were completely destroyed, stockpiled weaponry purchased by Iran from Africa and were intended to be smuggled to Hamas in Gaza.

As Iran and the P5+1 world powers struggle to eke out a deal on Tehran's nuclear program in Switzerland, Israel says it will do everything possible to prevent a nuclear Iran. Speaking on public radio Thursday, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) said that all options were on the table in the face of the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. This, he added, includes military action. Iran has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. Most recently on Tuesday, senior Iranian military official, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, said "Israel's destruction is non-negotiable" and that the Jewish state should be "wiped of the...