A senior military expert says Israel and Iran “are not necessarily on an inevitable course to a full-scale military conflict,” despite reports indicating that Iran plans to attack imminently.

By: World Israel News and Yona Schnitzer/TPS

A senior IDF source told Sky News Arabia that Iran plans to attack Israel from Syria, The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday.

“Israel will react strongly to any Iranian action from inside Syria,” a senior IDF source told the news site.

Aerial photos released Tuesday show that Iran has established several military bases in Syria. The pictures indicate that Tehran remains capable of flying in surface-to-surface missiles to Syria as well as unmanned aerial vehicles under the guise of humanitarian aid, the Post said.

However, according to Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former director-general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and former head of the IDF’s Intelligence Research and Assessment Division, Israel and Iran “are not necessarily on an inevitable course to a full-scale military conflict.”

Israeli security sources on Tuesday issued a stern warning to Iran not to launch revenge attacks on Israel after an IDF strike last week on a base in Syria that killed seven Iranian military advisers. Kuperwasser, in a conference call organized by The Israel Project, noted soon afgter that warning was issued that Israel and Iran have already been in a proxy war over Iran’s entrenchment in Syria for years.

Kuperwasser said the latest developments, in which rhetoric between Tehran and Jerusalem has reached boiling point, are mostly semantic.

Furthermore, Kuperwasser noted, Iran’s biggest concerns as of now are not Israel’s military actions, but rather the May 12th deadline set by U.S President Donald Trump, in which he may opt to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, effectively re-imposing economic sanctions on Iran.

Kuperwasser, noting that the IDF is on very high alert these days, did not seem too worried that the Iranians would attempt to disrupt Israel’s 70th Independence Day celebrations in retaliation for last week’s attack on the T-4 airbase. According to his assessment, if and when such an attack occurs, it will be at a time convenient to Iran.

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