At the same conference, Nir Barkat of Likud added that Iran needs to know that for any missile fired by a proxy, “our target will be Tehran.”
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Israel has informed the Americans that it has ordered the IDF to prepare for an operation against Iran if the Vienna talks fail and Tehran keeps advancing its nuclear program, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said in a press conference Friday.
“”There is no doubt that Iran is a problem for the world, and Israel is readying itself to act,” he said on the sidelines of the Israel American Council summit in Florida, which he addressed earlier. “During my meetings in Washington, I showed them how Israel sees ‘Plan B.’ We agreed on a deep-rooted cooperative effort, and I can tell you that I am deeply confident that it will grow deeper, thanks to our common interests.”
In his meetings with senior Biden administration officials, he said, “They understand that the Iranians are playing games” in the talks in Vienna regarding a return to the 2015 nuclear deal.”
Gantz reportedly discussed possible joint military exercises with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday, to prepare for a “worst-case scenario” with the possibility of the nuclear talks breaking down.
Kan News last week reported that the Israeli air force was planning a practice air strike in the coming summer in a huge drill of its capabilities against Iran.
At the same conference, Nir Barkat of the Likud spoke forcefully for holding Iran directly accountable for the actions of its terrorist clients who sit only miles away from Israel.
“If Iran gives an order to launch missiles [into Israel] from Lebanon, we must attack Tehran,” he said in a session Saturday.
“There are about 250,000 missiles around our borders,” he said. “We need to tell the Iranian regime that for every missile fired at Israel from one of its proxies, our target will be Tehran. We need to be prepared for the first war with Iran, and the only way to prevent a war is to prepare for it seriously. The Iranians need to understand that we will attack forcefully. I want them to be afraid before they press the button to attack Israel.”
In an op-ed in Israel Hayom nine days ago, Barkat had written that there would be no “Third Lebanon War,” but the “First Iran War.” Iran planned to attack Israel in a conventional fashion, he wrote, but “on six fronts: Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, internally with the assistance of some Arab Israelis, and through the use of long-range missiles from Iran and Yemen.”
This danger meant that “it was time to change the equation,” and that the mullahs should understand that “Iran’s days of immunity are over. They need to pay a price at home, in Tehran, and every other place they hold dear.”
Barkat told the conference attendees that Israel is united when it comes to its biggest strategic danger.
“When we talk about the Iranian threat, we are all one people – the opposition and the coalition in Israel as well as the US. Iran is governed by a radical Islamic regime that wants to obtain nuclear weapons in order to use them, that is their goal. There’s no point in talking to people who want to push you into the sea.”
An Israel Democracy Institute poll published last Wednesday showed that 58% of Israeli Jews support an IDF attack on Iran, even without U.S. permission. The number dropped to 51% when including the responses of Israeli Arabs. A majority of 54% of all Israelis said that Iran poses an existential threat to the country’s existence.