Important Takeaways:
- The White House on Tuesday said the US believes Iran is preparing an imminent ballistic missile attack against Israel.
- “The United States has indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel. We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack. A direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran,” a senior White House official said in a statement.
- “As of this moment, Israel does not perceive imminent threat from Iran,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said.
- During a short video message, Hagari said Israeli military planes are currently “scanning the sky” for any imminent threat from Iran.
- “We are on peak alert both on the offensive and the defensive,” Hagari added, warning Iran that any attack on Israel would “have consequences.” Tensions between Israel and Iran have ratcheted up significantly in recent weeks as Israel has stepped up its efforts against Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Iran-backed militant group.
- Israel on Monday launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hezbollah’s operations commander, Ibrahim Aqil, was the subject of a $7 million State Department reward for information leading to his arrest.
- The Israeli military said it had killed Aqil and as many as 10 other senior commanders of the movement’s Radwan special forces unit.
- “This elimination is intended to protect the citizens of Israel,” an Israeli military spokesman said in a brief statement.
- The State Department has identified Aqil, also known as Tahsin, as a member of Hezbollah’s “highest military body,” the Jihad Council.
- In the 1980s, as different factions vied for control of Lebanon and a U.S. Marine detachment was deployed as a would-be peacekeeping force, Aqil was a top figure in Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization. The organization took credit for the April 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, and the Marine Corps barracks in October of that year, which killed 241 Americans.
- Aqil also oversaw the abductions of American and German hostages in Lebanon, the State Department said last year. The department named Aqil a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2019.
- Israel’s Defense Forces said they struck more than 100 Hezbollah missile launchers as well as a munitions depot Thursday and Friday as well as targets in Beirut.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israeli strikes targeted infrastructure sites in southern Lebanon, including the areas of Chihine, Tayibe, Blida, Meiss El Jabal, Aitaroun and Kfarkela, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday. Israel also struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in Khiam.
- “The IDF will continue to operate against the threat of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in order to defend the State of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement.
- “Yes, we were subjected to a huge and severe blow,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said. “The enemy crossed all boundaries and red lines. The enemy will face a severe and fair punishment from where they expect and don’t expect.”
- “The Hezbollah terrorist organization has turned southern Lebanon into a combat zone. For decades, Hezbollah has weaponized civilian homes, dug tunnels beneath them, and used civilians as human shields,” Israel’s military said.
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Important Takeaways:
- How do we know that the coming days, weeks, and month or two before winter are potentially explosive?
- It is not just Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday, that the possibility for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah in the North is running out.
- It is not just the rumors that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to replace Gallant with Gideon Sa’ar as defense minister in order to have greater support for a major operation against Hezbollah.
- Throughout, the main reason not to enter into war with Hezbollah was to avoid distractions that might handicap the IDF from its goal of taking apart all 24 of Hamas’s battalions in Gaza.
- Gallant declared Hamas’s last battalion in Rafah defeated on August 21, nearly a month ago.
- Despite Netanyahu’s publicly threatening words and tone, another major reason that war has not broken out is that the prime minister was privately terrified of how many Israelis might die from an estimated Hezbollah onslaught of 6,000-8,000 rockets per day.
- August 25 is when all of that changed – radically.
- On that day, Hezbollah planned to launch several hundred, possibly up to 1,000 rockets on Israel, including on critical intelligence headquarters bases north of Tel Aviv.
- Yet, on August 25, the IDF did not just beat Hezbollah – it cleaned house.
- The military blew up the vast majority of the rockets and drones with which Hezbollah had intended to attack Israel before these threats could even be launched.
- Suddenly, Netanyahu has a newfound confidence: that he actually can afford a major operation against Hezbollah – with much fewer losses to the home front than he had expected.
- So, what if – instead of 5,000-10,000 dead Israelis from tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets over several weeks – he could hit Hezbollah harder than it’s ever been hit before and destroy so many of its rocket launchers on the ground that Israeli casualties might not be just smaller but exponentially smaller?
- Finally, the winter factor comes into play.
- Sources have told the Post that if more than 4-6 weeks pass without an operation, it may be impossible – or much harder – to carry out such an operation until Spring 2025.
- This would mean condemning the northern residents to another 6 months outside of their homes, something becoming increasingly untenable domestically in Israel.
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Important Takeaways:
- There were three other ways besides the recent smuggling of weapons through the corridor that were likely responsible for the vast majority of Hamas’s massive weapons buildup, the sources said.
- Although these points were made in a technical and professional context, they could also have significant implications for the ongoing debate within Israel over how crucial it is for the IDF to hold onto the Philadelphi Corridor or whether it can be temporarily given up as part of a deal for the return of dozens of Israeli hostages.
- According to people familiar with the matter, it could take Hamas years to rebuild its cross-border tunnel network, meaning certainly not during the 40-plus days Israel would theoretically leave the area during Phase I of one of the proposed hostage deals.
- Regarding the use of the tunnels for long-range rockets, IDF sources said Rafah, in general, and the corridor, in particular, had turned out to have one of Hamas’s largest long-range rocket arsenals that the military found, compared with any other part of Gaza.
- Hamas’s strategy was to place the long-range rockets and their launchers next to the border with Egypt to deter Israel from striking them and risking an international incident with Cairo, either by accidentally hitting Egyptian soldiers or merely causing explosions so close to another sovereign nation’s territory, the sources said.
- Furthermore, Hamas rocket teams would hide in the large tunnels, which had launchers and inventories of rockets connected to them via their extensive space and storage capabilities, they said.
- The Hamas rocket teams would briefly pop out of the tunnels at selected moments, only meters from the Egyptian border fence, and then either fire the rockets or set timers for them to launch, IDF sources said.
- After a brief time of being exposed and in an area in which Israel would be very worried about attacking, even if it had much time to calculate a precision strike carefully, the rocket teams would rapidly disappear back into the cross-border tunnels, they said.
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Important Takeaways:
- The raid on Sunday was the first ground operation the IDF has conducted in recent years against Iranian targets in Syria.
- The destruction of the factory appears to be a significant blow to an effort by Iran and Hezbollah to produce precision medium-range missiles on Syrian soil.
- Two sources said Israel briefed the Biden administration in advance of the sensitive operation and the U.S. didn’t oppose it.
- Two sources with direct knowledge told Axios the Iranians began building the underground facility in coordination with Hezbollah and Syria in 2018 after a series of Israeli airstrikes destroyed most of the Iranian missile production infrastructure in Syria.
- According to the sources, the Iranians decided to build an underground factory deep inside a mountain in Masyaf because it would be impenetrable to Israeli air strikes.
- The sources claimed the Iranian plan was to produce the precision missiles in this protected facility near the border with Lebanon so that the delivery process to Hezbollah in Lebanon could take place quickly and with less risk of Israeli airstrikes.
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Important Takeaways:
- IDF says Hamas used site to plan and carry out attacks on troops and Israel
- The United Nations on Wednesday night condemned an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza that rescuers said killed 18 people, including UN staffers, and called for the global body’s sites to be protected “by all parties.”
- Under international law, protected civilian infrastructure loses that status if used for military activities.
- The IDF said it carried out “many steps” to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.
- The military said Thursday that “upon receiving the allegation that local Palestinian workers of the UNRWA agency were killed in the strike, the IDF contacted the agency yesterday for details and names in order to examine the allegation in-depth and as of this writing it has not yet been answered despite repeated requests.”
- “It is unconscionable that the UN continues to condemn Israel in its just war against terrorists, while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shields,” Danny Danon wrote on social media.
- “The solution,” he added, “is not a ceasefire, but the release of all hostages still held in Gaza and the elimination of Hamas.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Agreeing to the world’s demands to leave Gaza prematurely, even to have the IDF leave the Egyptian border area temporarily, would be a serious and strategic error that would embolden and resupply Hamas and put Israelis in grave danger.
- That’s the case that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made last night in a nationally televised press conference in Hebrew.
- A visibly emotional Netanyahu apologized to the hostage families and nation for not being able to get the six recently murdered hostages out in time. He called the six “pure souls” and vowed Hamas would pay a heavy price for this “horrible massacre.”
- However, the prime minister insisted that the only way to get back the remaining 101 hostages and protect all Israelis from future attacks by Hamas was not to surrender the vital gains the IDF has made so far.
- His top priority right now?
- The IDF absolutely must maintain control of the border between Gaza and Egypt called the Philadelphi Corridor, Netanyahu said.
- He called it “the oxygen tube for Hamas” because through the smuggling tunnels on that border has come most of the weapons, ammunition, rockets, explosives, and other supplies that the terror group needs to fight Israel.
- Cutting off those supply lines will suffocate Hamas and persuade them to make a deal, the prime minister insisted.
- “They thought that Iran will save them. Or Hezbollah will come save them. They are hoping that international pressure — or internal Israeli pressure — will affect it. But the first change for a possible [hostage deal] came because we took control of the Philadelphi Line.”
- “Once we get out of it we will not be able to go back in,” Netanyahu said.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced early Sunday morning local time that it had launched a preemptive strike on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon to thwart a major imminent attack by the Iran-backed terror group.
- Residents of northern Israel were advised to enter bomb shelters and “safe rooms” in their homes in anticipation of a response by Hezbollah. Israel’s missile defense system, notably the Iron Dome, was said to be intercepting rockets.
- Israel’s Army Radio reported that residents were being advised to take shelter even in cities relatively far from the northern border, such as the port city of Haifa, which is in the north of the country but typically safe from rockets.
- In a statement in Hebrew, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that the military had detected that Hezbollah was about to fire a large barrage of rockets and missiles into Israel. Therefore, he said, the Israel Air Force (IAF) had taken preemptive action. A response was expected from Hezbollah, and therefore he said that residents of the north should enter safe rooms for at least ten minutes. He stressed that Israel’s defenses were “not hermetic.”
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Important Takeaways:
- President Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with his national security team in the Situation Room later on Monday amid heightened tensions between Iran and Israel.
- The Islamic Republic could attack Israel in the next 24 to 48 hours following a major attack by Hezbollah that left two IDF soldiers injured, top western diplomats have warned.
- Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told the G7 yesterday that an attack in response to Israel killing Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Fuad Shukr in Beirut, was imminent, as reported by Axios.
- It would be the second time during the growing crisis in the Middle East that Iran has directly attacked Israel, the first being in April when it sent a salvo of missiles and drones overnight.
- But unlike the April attack, the US admitted in a private call with G7 members that it doesn’t know what the expected retaliatory strike will look like.
- Nevertheless, Iran has clearly signaled that it intends to attack its foe, claiming it has the ‘legal right’ to respond to Haniyeh’s assassination, with foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani telling a news conference: ‘No one has the right to doubt Iran’s legal right to punish the Zionist regime.’
- The threats from Iran comes just hours after Hezbollah, backed by the Iranian regime, launched a silo of 30 missiles from Lebanon towards upper Galilee.
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