There was a lot of noise over nothing on Israel’s northern front over the weekend; while the media was abuzz over a number of incidents and reports, nothing significant actually changed on the ground.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed the US and Israel in a speech to Muslim leaders on Sunday at an international conference in Tehran. He accused the ‘world’s arrogant powers’ – which he said are led by ‘the Great Satan’ – of wilting in the face of a rising Islamic awakening in the Middle East. ‘The Zionist regime is much weaker than before,’ he claimed, pointing to what he said were Israeli defeats at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and Palestinians in Gaza in 2009.
Commando units of the military are currently in a 10-day-long drill to improve their preparedness for a two-front war, the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit announced Saturday night.
Israel has reportedly sent a message to the Lebanese government via Paris demanding that it act against the Hezbollah terror group’s rocket factories in the country, saying if Lebanon refused to do so, Israel could take military action.
Iran reportedly delivered GPS components to Hezbollah in Lebanon that will allow the group to transform rudimentary projectiles into precision-guided missiles, thereby increasing the threat to Israel. Western intelligence services believe Tehran has shifted its strategy by increasingly shipping weaponry directly to its proxy in Beirut, with a view to evading Israeli air strikes.
American and western intelligence sources believe Iran has been increasing its shipments of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, deliveries that now include Global Positioning System (GPS) components to make previously unguided rockets into precision guided-missiles, increasing the threat to Israel.
The Islamic State remains ‘far from defeated,’ one of the nation’s top generals warned Tuesday, seeming to break with President Trump’s assertion that the terrorist group was ’99 percent’ beaten after four years of U.S.-led military action in Syria and Iraq.
The Israeli Defense Ministry recently completed the construction of a nine-meter high concrete wall — topped by steel fencing — along a 12-kilometer stretch of the Israel-Lebanon border, the Hebrew news site Walla reported on Sunday.
The U.S. State Department recently published an unprecedented report detailing the financial resources Iran invests in destabilizing the Middle East.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran is attempting to establish a military presence on the border with Israel along the Golan Heights.
Russia provided the advanced S-300 air defense system to Syria’s military free of charge, transferring three battalions with eight launchers each to the Assad regime, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported Monday.
Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem addressed the UN General Assembly on Saturday with a focus on what the regime intends to do about the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. He declared that Damascus aims to recapture the territory from Israel after Syrian regime forces have retaken areas opposite the Israeli border during a recent Russian-backed offensive.
The United Kingdom’s Home Secretary Sajid Javid will designate the entire Lebanese organization Hezbollah as a terrorist movement at next week’s Conservative Party conference.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, said Wednesday that Israel must stop its ‘intolerable’ attacks in Syria. His comments came after an Israeli airstrike on a Syrian base in Latakia, during which a Russian spy plane was accidentally shot down by soldiers loyal to President Bashar Assad.
IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis addressed the downing of the Russian plane in Syria on Tuesday after Moscow accused Israel of a hostile provocation and threatened to respond.
Israel struck in Syria on Saturday night, targeting an area near the airport in Damascus, Syrian state media reported. According to the report, several Israeli missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defenses.
An Iranian civil aviation company is suspected of smuggling arms into Lebanon, destined for the militant group Hezbollah and Iranian weapons factories — and western intelligence sources said Monday they’ve uncovered the unexpected routes that Iran apparently took to try avoiding detection.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech marking the first anniversary of the liberation of the Syrian border from the ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra control, and claimed that it could not embark on another fight in Lebanon.
White House National Security Adviser John Bolton arrived in Israel Sunday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks focused mainly on Iran.
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said Tuesday that US sanctions against Iran and his Iran-backed group will not have major effects on them and will not lead to regime change in Tehran.