STRIKE FIRST: IDF prepares to attack Iranian nuclear reactor

“The entire Israeli intelligence community is taking part in this effort,” IDF Chief of Staff Kohavi said. 

By World Israel News Staff and TPS

The IDF is in constant preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi stated, “to provide an effective and timely military response.”

Speaking on Tuesday at a ceremony during which General Aharon Haliva took over as head of the IDF’s Intelligence Division, Kohavi stated that “the IDF and the intelligence community know a fair amount about what is happening in Iran and are working against Iranian entrenchment throughout the Middle East. Operations to counter threatening Iranian capabilities will continue in various arenas and at any time.”

“The operational plans against Iran’s nuclear program will continue to evolve and improve. Whatever may come—it is our duty to provide an effective and timely military response,” Kohavi stated.

“The entire Israeli intelligence community is taking part in this effort,” he said. “And if we can learn anything from the many [technological] breakthroughs from recent years, it’s that our operational plans will be improved and unexpected.”

In his first-ever address to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged the world to take action against Iran, before it is too late. Israel bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 and the Syrian nuclear program in 2007.

Outgoing intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Tamir Hayman has indicated that while Iran is still a couple of years away from acquiring a functioning nuclear bomb, according to Israeli intelligence, “the [Iranian] regime must fall, its existence is not good for the State of Israel.”

He added that “the complex reality in the Middle East continues to challenge us” and that Iran is the “driving force” that finances and arms terror groups throughout the region.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, Shia militias in Syria, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and militias in Iraq are all financed and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, as indicated by a statement issued last month by Iranian Maj.-Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, a prominent commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.