Last night, Israel threatened to “cut off the head of the snake” and attack Iran militarily if the terror organisation Hezbollah, which is supported by Tehran, joined the conflict.
Israel’s Minister of Economy, Nir Barkat, threatened to have Iran’s Ayatollahs “wiped off the face of the earth” in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday if their proxy terror outfit, Hezbollah, attacked Israel.
His inflammatory remarks came before of an anticipated Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip with the goal of “annihilating” Hamas, raising the dire prospect of a fast intensifying regional conflict.
On the borders of the region where Hamas, which is also supported by Iran, is detaining over 200 captives who were taken during the savage attack on southern Israel on October 7, tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers are positioned.
However, with Hezbollah and the Israel Defence Forces exchanging gunfire across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon this week, concerns are mounting that Israel may have to battle on two fronts.
Mr. Barkat issued a clear threat to prevent Tehran from interfering further, stating that if Israel feels that Hezbollah is creating a “northern front,” “we will actually target Iran” in addition to “eliminating Hezbollah.”
Iran intends to strike Israel from every angle.
We will not only retaliate on those fronts, but we will go all the way to Iran—the head of the snake—if we discover that they plan to attack Israel.
We will completely destroy our adversaries if they assault.
The Iranian Ayatollahs will not sleep well at night because, God forbid, if they open the northern front, we will make sure they pay a steep price.
“Hamas will pay a heavy price, and Lebanon and Hezbollah will pay even more.”
However, that’s insufficient.
The message is pretty clear: we will also be pursuing the leaders of Iran.
Why don’t we do that now? Israel has sent a very clear message to our enemies when we make a decision.
We are telling them that if they attack us, they would receive the same treatment as what is happening in Gaza.
We intend to eradicate you from the face of the planet.
Mr. Barkat delivered his unwavering admonition as:Following the release of an American woman and her daughter on Friday, an agreement to free 50 other hostages fell through;Extremist Islamists urged Muslim armies to rebel against Israel in the streets of London;As relief trucks reached Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, chaos broke out, but individuals with foreign passports were prevented from leaving;After volunteering to fight in Israel’s war on terror, young Jewish women in Britain spoke of their will to defend the country; according to Palestine, 4,385 people have died and 13,651 have been injured in Gaza, while Israeli fatalities have approached 1,400.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared that ‘excellent progress’ had been achieved in opening up humanitarian access, even in the face of mounting tensions, and that there was still ‘space for politics and diplomacy even in this darkest hour’.
Too many people have already perished as a result of Hamas’ horrifying act of terror.
Regardless of race or religion, every innocent life lost weakens us all, as Mr. Sunak stated in The Sunday Telegraph.
Hezbollah is one of the most potent paramilitary groups in the Middle East, with 20,000 militants, and Iran is thought to provide hundreds of millions of cash a year to the Islamists.
2006 saw the start of a massive conflict between Israel and Lebanon as a result of rockets fired by Hezbollah towards Israeli cities.
In an explosive interview, Mr. Barkat, the former mayor of Jerusalem, declared that Hezbollah “will not escalate without the order of Iran” and that “Hezbollah is Iran in many ways.”
He claimed that both Mr. Sunak and US President Joe Biden—who travelled to Israel last week—are aware that Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah are part of a “global alignment of evil.”
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, has cautioned against allowing the Israel-Hamas conflict to lead to more instability.
“We must work together to prevent the tragic situation in Gaza from becoming a regional conflict because that is exactly what Hamas wants,” he stated during a peace summit in Cairo.
The Israeli minister’s remarks yesterday night alarmed military analysts by raising the possibility of a major escalation that might lead to a full-scale conflict in the area.
Former chief of the British Army’s Joint Forces Command, General Sir Richard Barrons, issued a dire warning, saying that “Iran will respond if Israel strikes Iran because that is an act of war against Iran.”
And when that occurs, the entire Muslim community will believe that Israel and Islam are at war, and where does it lead? “There is a constant risk in the Middle East that things will get out of hand and the world will become a place that nobody wants to be.”
That is exactly what Hamas wants—a larger battle.
According to Michael Clarke, who works in the King’s College London war studies department, US officials are thought to have advised Israel not to issue threats similar to the ones that Mr. Barkat made.
“The Iranians and Israelis are speaking fiercely,” he declared.
“There are rumours that the US heavily relies on Tel Aviv to refrain from making preemptive statements of the kind that you have just quoted because that would inflame the situation.”
It’s possible that the Iranians won’t be able to maintain control over the forces operating on their behalf, despite the Israelis’ claims to the contrary.
Mr. Barkat compared the state of Israel to London during the Blitz in 1940.
In addition, he issued a warning that if Hamas is not “wiped out,” similar terror assaults will occur in the UK.
Mr. Barkat, a former paratrooper in the Israel Defence Forces, claimed to have sent several of the BBC’s reporters to Kfar Aza, a kibbutz where over 70 people were killed, in response to criticism of the broadcaster’s failure to label Hamas terrorists.
We saw the horrors that took place in the chambers and the lingering stench of death.
It’s a hell zone rather than just a conflict zone.
Can they explain what they observed? What organisation is a terrorist organisation if this one isn’t?He added that a video showing Hamas terrorists dousing a woman in petrol and setting her ablaze in the street had been seen by Israeli officials.
For years, Israel has been conducting airstrikes against targets in Syria that it claims are connected to Iran.
Tehran has been Assad’s ally in the civil war that started in 2011.
To simulate a long-range strike on Iran and its nuclear facilities, dozens of Israeli Air Force jets, reconnaissance planes, and refuelling aircraft travelled thousands of kilometres from Israel to Greece and back in September.
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