Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has reportedly taken shelter and canceled any “movements” over fears he may be targeted next.

By Honest Reporting

According to a former head of Israel’s military intelligence, the senior Iranian scientist assassinated last week was such a central figure in Tehran’s nuclear program that it would be nearly impossible to replace him and thus is liable to significantly set back the Islamic Republic’s atomic ambitions.

“There is no doubt that [Mohsen Fakhrizadeh] was the core source of authority, knowledge and organization of this [nuclear] program,” Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin said during a virtual conference hosted by MediaCentral.

Fakhrizadeh was killed on Friday in an elaborate operation attributed to Israel’s Mossad spy agency, although there are conflicting accounts of what exactly transpired.

While Yadlin emphasized that the harm to Iran’s “covert weaponization program [was] huge,” he qualified that the damage could not be precisely measured “since nobody knows exactly the scope and depth and what the Iranians are doing.”

Meanwhile, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanon-based Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah, has reportedly taken shelter and canceled any “movements” over fears he may be targeted next.

In the interim, Israeli embassies and Jewish institutions across the globe have been placed on high alert following Iranian threats of retaliation. Jerusalem’s security establishment has also apparently warned that Tehran could be planning attacks on Israeli tourists visiting the United Arab Emirates.

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“This is a terrible, terrible disaster. The big question is how many people are missing. The numbers are between 1,000 to 4,000,” says Amos Yadlin.

By Yaakov Lappin, JNS

A day after two blasts—one of them an enormous—ripped through Beirut, causing untold destruction, it’s still not possible to grasp the true scope of the calamity, a former Israeli Military Intelligence chief has said.

Speaking by video conference to journalists, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, who served as former deputy commander of the Israeli Air Force and is now executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies, noted that Israel has offered medical assistance to Lebanon. “This is a terrible, terrible disaster. The big question is how many people are missing. The numbers are between 1,000 to 4,000.”

Analyzing the incidents that led to the explosion, Yadlin said it “started from a small explosion at what looks like a fireworks storage [facility]. And then the big explosion came,” he said, citing the 2,700 tons of reported ammonium nitrate stored at a warehouse at the port’s dock.

Ammonium nitrate “is material used to develop explosives,” he said. “It is also good for agriculture, but the fact that it was there since 2014 is saying that it was not taken for agriculture. The purpose of this storage was for explosives.”

Regarding the question of who owned the warehouse and why the material was there, Yadlin said “this is something I guess that the Lebanese authorities are investigating.”

He added that it cannot be proven at this stage that it was a Hezbollah warehouse. If, however, signs emerge that this is indeed the case, it would form a “very serious allegation against Hezbollah,” which could turn into significant political pressure on it to end its role as a military power in Lebanon and delegate that role to the official Lebanese military, he assessed.

Ammonium nitrate has been used before by Hezbollah operatives abroad in planning out a terror attack. In 2015, a Lebanese-Canadian man tied to Hezbollah was convicted in Cyprus after he was found in possession of 8.5 tons of ammonium nitrate in his basement.

That same year, the Mossad told authorities in the U.K. of four properties in Northwest London that contained three tons of ammonium nitrate belonging to Hezbollah. Earlier this year, the Mossad again tipped off Germany on Hezbollah’s activities on its soil, including warehouses in the south of the country where Hezbollah stashed hundreds of kilograms of ammonium nitrate.

“This is another blow to the Lebanese state that was already [suffering] a huge crisis,” said Yadlin. The factors that created this crisis included severe economic, financial, political and social problems.

Even prior to the blast, tensions were rising in the country. In that context, he explained, “what is important is that Hezbollah is using civilian neighborhoods to store weapons. They use civilian neighborhoods as shields for their activity. There are elements in Lebanon and the international community calling on Hezbollah to stop hiding behind the excuse that it needs these weapons against Israel.”

Nuclear capability and hegemony in the Middle East

Yadlin pointed out that Israel hasn’t attacked Lebanon in 14 years and that the two countries have “no real dispute” over borders. Even a disagreement over offshore gas-drilling rights in the Mediterranean Sea “was already brokered by the Americans.”

Hezbollah, he said, is looking for excuses to keep the conflict going with Israel. “This is a very good time for Lebanese to tell Hezbollah: ‘We have so many other problems, give us a break from your excuses for Iranian interests that running behind you.’ The issue starts with Iran sending advanced weapons to Hezbollah via Syria.”

More broadly, the Iranian terror axis of which Hezbollah is part of is under great pressure, said Yadlin. Factors like America’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran—added to economic dysfunction, collapsing oil prices, Israel’s campaign to roll back Iranian military entrenchment in Syria, the coronavirus pandemic, the recent assassination of Quds Force Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani—have all contributed to growing discontent among the general populace.

“The Iranians are continuing, despite all of the difficulties, with two strategic efforts: come as close as possible to nuclear capability and to have hegemony in the Middle East,” stated Yadlin.

So far, Iran has failed operationally to deter Israel, and Syria is focused on what remains of its civil war in Idlib, so Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah decided to step up and attempt to “revenge any Israeli activities in Syria if Hezbollah terrorists will be killed as well. This is what happened last week, and Nasrallah decided to act,” he summed up.

Nasrallah attempted to calibrate his actions so that they would on the one hand kill a few Israeli soldiers, but on the other avoid all-out war. “Very much like his Iranian masters, he failed operationally,” said Yadlin.

Nasrallah’s excuse

Now, in the aftermath of the Beirut explosion, Nasrallah has found his excuse to “remove this issue from the agenda, especially if this warehouse was a Hezbollah warehouse,” he said. “And there are already a lot of voices in Lebanon that blame Hezbollah for the financial difficulties. There are new sanctions on Lebanon because of Hezbollah. The banking system is collapsing because of Hezbollah. Every Lebanese knows that Hezbollah is the strongest military power in Lebanon with a lot of political influence.”

With all of these multiple crises in Lebanon, joined by the latest disaster in Beirut, some Lebanese civilians will likely be thinking “why do they need another dimension of destruction that will come from Nasrallah attacking Israel? So I think he will find a ladder to come down from the tree,” said Yadlin.

Asked whether the Beirut disaster will set the stage for the International Monetary Fund to provide major assistance to Lebanon, Yadlin said that remains unclear. “It could on the one hand say, ‘Let’s put aside everything and help Lebanon.’ On the other hand … [the blast] may help those who say Hezbollah is the problem, and that this was a Hezbollah warehouse. The IMF could say ‘until you move Hezbollah away from its positions that they took in Lebanon, we are not helping you despite the disaster.’”

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Former Israeli intelligence chief Amos Yadlin assesses that the Trump administration will pressure Netanyahu to include center-left Benny Gantz instead of the New Right party in his new government. 

By David Jablinowitz, World Israel News

With the Knesset election approaching and the U.S. administration getting ready to present a “deal of the century” for the Israelis and Palestinians, questions continue to arise over how the juxtaposition of the two will work out.

Even as conflicting reports have emerged over how advanced the U.S. plan is towards completion, American officials have made clear that they want to make it public soon.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in early January that the release of the plan would be postponed by “several months” because of the Israeli election and the ongoing refusal by the Palestinian Authority to accept the plan. However, later in the month, Friedman reportedly revealed in private talks that the Trump administration is planning to roll out its plan at the end of April.

The Knesset ballot is scheduled for April 9th. It is uncertain that a new government could be established by the end of the month.

“I think that the Americans have reached the conclusion – and this is an assessment, not a statement of fact – that they need to influence which government there will be in Israel after the elections,” said Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, executive director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Yadlin is a former chief of Israeli military intelligence and has served as military attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to lead the next government, has already inserted U.S. President Donald Trump in his election campaign by putting the president in a video clip and on a giant billboard advertisement.

Interviewed on Kan public radio on Sunday, Yadlin indicated that while Trump might not openly get involved in the Israeli election campaign, he could get involved in the formation of the next Israeli government by issuing his peace plan during the weeks immediately after the election, when the potential prime minister is negotiating with various smaller parties to form a parliamentary majority.

Public opinion polling numbers have shown Netanyahu’s Likud party leading the pack by a sizable number of seats but with neither the right nor the left holding a majority. In this case, Netanyahu would have to think more broadly about who to choose as his government coalition partners. In previous governments, he has included center-left parties with the likes of Ehud Barak serving as defense minister and Tzipi Livni as peace negotiator.

Asked in the radio interview whether the Americans might encourage Netanyahu to include the new Israel Resilience party, headed by former IDF military chief Benny Gantz, into the new government, Yadlin said: “This is exactly the intention, to move the next coalition of the State of Israel to the center-right, not to the extreme right.”

The strong showing by Israel Resilience in the opinion polls bolsters the possibility that Trump’s team could convince Netanyahu to offer Gantz a place in the next government instead of the New Right party, which has been receiving far fewer seats in the polls.

Gantz has spoken in favor of territorial compromise while the New Right is against the establishment of a Palestinian state and has raised doubts over whether they could accept the Trump plan if, in fact, Israeli pullouts from Judea and Samaria are part of the deal.

Kan aired a recording of Netanyahu speaking to leaders of Arab states at last week’s Warsaw conference on Middle East stability, in which the prime minister says: “We will wait to see what the [U.S.] plan that will be presented after the Israeli elections will look like…I don’t think any of us should reject the plan by the American administration before it is even presented.”

Netanyahu has touted the Jewish State’s growing ties with the Arab world, adding in the recording: “For Israel to be at peace or normalize relations with the broader Arab world, we must have Israel-Palestinian peace.”

On the other hand, New Right candidate Caroline Glick told the Jerusalem Post in an interview: “It’s mystifying that [Trump administration officials] think there’s a deal to be made when there so obviously isn’t one from the Palestinian perspective.”

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Syria is too busy consolidating its control in the north and in the south to dare open another front with Israel, said former IDF intelligence head. 

By: World Israel News Staff

Syria has no interest in opening another front with Israel and, therefore, will not attempt to retaliate for Israel’s downing of a Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet Tuesday.

That was the military evaluation offered by former head of IDF intelligence Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin during an interview Wednesday on Army Radio.

Yadlin, former deputy commander of the Israel Air Force and present executive director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, said that Syria has a number of more pressing goals that require the Syrian military’s full attention.

These goals include wresting control of the Idlib region from rebels and ISIS forces and finishing off the reassertion of Syrian control in the south along Israel’s border.

Yadlin noted that previous attacks against Syria attributed to Israel have been much more severe than Tuesday’s felling of a Syrian fighter plane.

After each attack, which included an airstrike on the T-4 airbase near Homs earlier this month, Syria has either issued aempty threats or ignored the incident altogether.

The IDF said that the Syrian plane destroyed by Israel after it entered a full mile into Israeli airspace took off from the same T-4 base.

Yadlin said that Israel has made it clear that all Syrian or Iranian aircrafts that enter Israeli airspace would be knocked down. He also noted that all Israel military operations were coordinated with the Russians and that there was a direct line of communication between the IDF and the Russian military stationed in Syria.

“The situation in Syria is complicated, with Syria, Iran and Russia all fighting the rebels and ISIS,” Yadlin said. “If a Russian aircraft had entered our airspace, I reckon the Israeli reaction would have been different.”

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