Important Takeaways:
- The Pentagon has warned Israel against any “miscalculation” along its northern border with Lebanon, as fighting between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia continues and Israeli leaders threaten to launch a full-scale cross-frontier incursion.
- Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. believes a diplomatic solution to the border tensions is still achievable and that “no one” would benefit from a new Israel-Lebanon war, which could plunge the region into fresh conflict
- Israeli troops, meanwhile, have been training for a possible incursion into southern Lebanon for several months, with “operational plans” for an offensive into Lebanon already “approved and validated,” according to the IDF.
- Hezbollah has said it will keep fighting until Israeli forces fully withdraw from Gaza. But Israel is demanding that Hezbollah pull back its forces north of the Litani River—around 18 miles north of the Israeli border—in accordance with a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution that sought to end the last major clash between the two sides.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Pentagon is moving U.S. military assets closer to Israel and Lebanon to be ready to evacuate Americans as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies
- U.S. officials are increasingly concerned Israel is going to carry out airstrikes and a possible ground offensive in Lebanon in the coming weeks.
- Israel wants to move Hezbollah farther away from the border and is pushing for a diplomatic solution, but if that does not work the Israel Defense Forces are ready to use force, an Israeli official said.
- The goal is to return quiet to northern Israel so that 60,000 Israelis who have left in the past eight months because of Hezbollah rocket fire can go home, the official said.
- The State Department estimated in 2022 that 86,000 Americans live in Lebanon. In 2006, the U.S. evacuated 15,000 people from the country during Israel’s war with Hezbollah.
- In a statement, Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said restoring calm along the Israel-Lebanon border “remains a top priority for the United States and must be of the utmost importance for both Lebanon and Israel. We continue to work toward a diplomatic resolution that would allow Israeli and Lebanese citizens to safely return to their homes and live in peace and security.”
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Important Takeaways:
- “The enemy knows very well that no place will be safe from our missiles and drones,” Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said on June 19.
- Keeping those weapons from hitting Israeli territory is the job of a sophisticated air defense system called Iron Dome.
- But some experts warn that Hezbollah’s arsenal could push the system past its limits.
- The Iranian-backed group has been conducting increasingly brazen attacks using exploding drones and low-flying missiles that Iron Dome has struggled to intercept.
- And last week, Hezbollah published a 10-minute-long surveillance video from an unmanned aerial vehicle that had slipped past multiple Iron Dome launchers.
- The implication was clear: Hezbollah has Iron Dome in its sights.
- Unlike the Palestinian group Hamas, Hezbollah is believed to have a large arsenal of precision-guided weapons that it could fire in a war with Israel.
- “Look, there’s not enough Iron Domes in the world to contend with the reported 100,000 or so rockets that Hezbollah may have”
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Important Takeaways:
- In a short interview with LifeSiteNews, Colonel Douglas Macgregor sounded the alarm about an Israeli attack on Hezbollah that could well widen the war, as well as the escalation of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
- We thank Colonel Macgregor for this interview, whose answers he wrote in the middle of last night.
- In recent weeks, you have sounded the alarm on the situation in Israel with regard to Hezbollah. What do you see happening very soon and when do you think it will happen?
- [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu must escalate or admit defeat. Attacking Hezbollah presents him with the opportunity to entangle American military power in his war for Jewish supremacy in the Near East. The prospect of employing U.S. military power (air and naval forces) against Israel’s enemies is probably appealing to Israelis.
- What will be the effects on the region in the Middle East and in the world should such an attack by Israel on Hezbollah take place within the next couple days?
- I expect the assault on Hezbollah to begin any time after June 24. The effects will be profound. More Muslims will flee to Europe. The economic life of the region will be destroyed, and Russia + China and Iran will likely directly engage Israeli and U.S. forces involved in the war.
- Do you expect Israel to use nuclear weapons?
- The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] can employ tactical nuclear weapons. Given the density of Hezbollah defenses and the numbers of rockets and missiles Hezbollah can launch against targets in Israel, a tactical nuclear weapon is the most appealing option. Heavy casualties in Gaza have reduced IDF fighting power. Israel cannot afford the heavy losses that systematic IDF conventional attacks on Southern Lebanon would produce. However, the use of these weapons would likely precipitate massive Iranian missile attacks against Israel in retaliation. From there the war will spread and other nation states will turn out to have nuclear weapons. Instead of abruptly ending the war as the Israelis hope, it will widen and lengthen the war with ominous implications for Israel’s very existence.
- What would you tell the leaders of our country in light of the escalation in both conflict regions, Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia?
- Washington is taking unacceptable risks in its relations with Moscow. It would be wise as well as humane to end the suffering in Ukraine. It is time for the [U.S. government] to admit defeat and reach an accommodation with Moscow that ends the war in Ukraine.
- Meanwhile, Israel is overreaching. It runs the risk of war with Iran and the whole region if it acts in Southern Lebanon as anticipated above. Washington has no strategic interest that justifies a regional war with Islam in the Near East. If Washington persists, it will discover that Russia will not abandon Iran and that many other countries, including China, will line up in support of Iran and Russia against Washington.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel is facing rising pressures from outside and within today. As the Jewish state is simply looking to protect its people from daily rocket attacks, the U.S. is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the fighting between Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Israel before it turns into a full-blown war. Meanwhile, Israel’s Supreme Court ruling Tuesday concerning the drafting of ultra-Orthodox men could also pose problems for Netanyahu’s government.
- U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Hezbollah that Washington can’t stop Israel from going to war to prevent the terror group’s daily attacks on the north.
- “Hezbollah’s provocations threaten to drag the Israeli and Lebanese people into a war that they do not want,” Austin said Tuesday. “And such a war would be a catastrophe for Lebanon, and it would be devastating for innocent Israeli and Lebanese civilians.”
- Yoav Gallant says Israel is determined to establish security in the north and bring back some 80,000 citizens evacuated from their homes. He asked the U.S. to focus on heading off a larger threat: Iran getting nuclear weapons.
- “The greatest threat to the future of the world and the future of our region is Iran. And time is running out,” Gallant insisted.
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Important Takeaways:
- In a video message, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said, “In case an inclusive war is imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without restraints, without rules, without limits.”
- The minute-long clip then shows footage of various sites in central Israel, along with their GPS coordinates.
- “Whoever thinks of war against us, will regret it,” the video ends.
- The White House official reportedly rejected Jerusalem’s demand that a diplomatic deal to end the conflict in the north be based on the implementation of U.N. Security Resolution 1701—which was adopted to end the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and calls for a demilitarized zone from the Blue Line to the Litani River some 18 miles to the north.
- Instead, he said it should include a range of options, including moving Hezbollah six miles from the border. He stressed that the United States was concerned about further escalation and called for calm on both sides.
- Iran-backed Hezbollah has attacked northern Israel nearly every day since joining the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, killing more than 20 people and causing widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the ongoing violence.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for America’s support for Israel on Sunday, but he explained his charge that the Biden administration is holding up weapons Israel desperately needs.
- Netanyahu stated, “About four months ago, there was a dramatic drop in the supply of armaments arriving from the US to Israel. For weeks we asked our American friends to speed up the shipments. We did it time and time again. We did this in the upper ranks, and in all ranks – and I want to emphasize – we did it behind closed doors. All kinds of explanations, but we didn’t get one thing: the basic situation didn’t change.”
- The White House continues to deny it is slow-walking the weapons shipments, but after October 7th, the administration knocked all bureaucratic barriers out of the way to fast-track weapons to Israel. That, Jerusalem claims, is no longer happening.
- Before Gallant left for Washington, he announced that Israel is prepared for action, if necessary, in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere.
- The Israeli Embassy in Washington’s former liaison to Congress, Yoram Ettinger, told CBN News
- that Hezbollah isn’t just the enemy of Israel but of the U.S. as well. The Iranian-backed group has close ties with Latin American terror organizations and drug cartels and is helping train them for terrorism.
- “They are focusing on the U.S. primarily, much more so than on Israel,” he noted. “Their aim, as they stated, is to bring the great American Satan to submission. At this time, to see the State Department pressuring Israel to switch from the military option on Hamas to the diplomatic option, and leaning on Israel to refrain from preempting an expected Hezbollah war, undermines not only any Israeli interest, it undermines homeland security in the U.S. itself.”
- The Associated Press reports that Iranian-supported terrorist fighters in countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan say they’re ready to go to Lebanon and fight alongside Hezbollah if a full war breaks out.
- Iran has even hinted that Tehran may involve its military.
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Important Takeaways:
- Lebanon and Israel have regularly traded cross-border fire since the start of the Jewish state’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas — which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran — in the Gaza Strip.
- Fire exchanges have intensified since an Israeli airstrike last week killed a senior Hezbollah commander
- Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said: “Israel knows very well that no place will be safe from our missiles and drones”
- He added that Hezbollah has now “obtained new weapons,” but did not share any more details.
- The Hezbollah leader also threatened war against the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, if the European Union member permits Israel to launch military operations from its territory.
- Nasrallah’s speech fans the flames of increasingly heated rhetoric over the past week, as the spike in missiles traded between Israel and Lebanon raises concerns of a wider conflict in the Middle East.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz also warned that his country is now “very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel, Hezbollah on ‘brink’ of all-out war, officials warn
- The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) made the warning on Sunday, just a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to meet with Amos Hochstein, a top aide to President Biden. Biden’s administration is pushing Israel to avoid a war in Lebanon, but IDF officials continue to highlight the outsized threat posed by Hezbollah compared to Hamas.
- “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation,” an IDF spokesman warned Sunday.
- “We are committed to the diplomatic process, however Hezbollah’s aggression is bringing us closer to a critical point in the decision-making regarding our military activities in Lebanon,” he told the Biden representative.
- Hezbollah, however, is far more well-equipped and has more manpower. Their rockets and drone attacks have already forced over 100,000 Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel.
- “Hezbollah is the crown jewel in the Iranian empire of terror and evil and is by far the most powerful Iranian proxy, equipped with nation state capabilities and even more firepower than several European countries have today,” former IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus told Fox News.
- “In a military comparison, Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas,” he added.
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Important Takeaways:
- IDF: Half of Hamas Battalions Destroyed in Rafah; Operation to Last Two More Weeks
- The IDF entered Rafah in early May — against the wishes of the Biden administration — to destroy the four Hamas battalions that remained there, having destroyed at least 18 of the 24 battalions in fighting elsewhere in Gaza since late October. The White House relented but insisted on a slow pace, with limited use of heavy munitions, and care to avoid civilian casualties.
- The IDF raced to secure the Philadelphi Corridor — the road along the Gaza-Egypt border — and the Rafah border crossing. It has since fought a steady, methodical, house-to-house and tunnel-to-tunnel battle against Hamas there.
- The Jerusalem Post reported:
- The IDF on Monday said that its Division 162 has defeated half of Hamas’s battalions in Rafah, including killing at least 550 terrorists, as well as destroyed around 200 tunnel shafts, and eliminated the terror group’s last major rocket inventory.
- Further, the IDF said that within a couple of weeks it would likely be in control of all of Rafah and that the final battles with the remaining two Hamas battalions in parts of Tel al-Sultan and the eastern part of Shabura are already underway.
- Currently, the IDF says Division 162, commanded by Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, has already achieved operation control of over 60-70% of all of Rafah with all of the 1.4 million or so civilians having long fled to al-Muwasi on the coast, central Gaza and Khan Yunis.
- Once it is concluded, the IDF will shift to a counterinsurgency strategy in Gaza — and will likely shift focus to a potential clash with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
- There are still 116 Israeli hostages in Gaza, of whom 41 are known to be dead. They are being hidden — possibly underground.
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