Yochanan Visser
Last week, two important events regarding Israel’s struggle against Iran occurred.
The first was the roll-out of the Israel Defense Forces new multi-year strategic plan dubbed ‘Momentum’, and the second was the announcement that the IDF now has a special Iran Command that will focus on detecting and analyzing threats posed by the Islamic Republic.
The plan was drawn up by Aviv Kochavi, the IDF’s Chief of Staff, and approved by Defense Minister Naftali Bennett. It is now awaiting final approval by the Israeli cabinet.
A part of the plan has already been carried out and it will significantly improve the capabilities of the Israel military versus the Iranian axis in the field of lethality, intelligence, cyber-warfare and, aerial superiority.
“After a thorough and in-depth process with the chief of staff, IDF commanders and the defense establishment, I endorsed the Momentum Plan that will allow the IDF to strike at the enemy faster, with greater force, with greater lethality and thus defeating the enemy and achieving victory,” Bennett said on Thursday.
Gaps between the Israeli military and the Iranian axis are closing rapidly according to the IDF, while Kochavi said that “the threats are not waiting for us” and if Israel now not “presses on the gas hard” it will not reach a situation where it can win a war with Iran and its allies as quickly as is required.
To achieve the goals of Momentum the IDF will close down a tank battalion and establish a new rapid movement infantry division which will have units that can operate deep inside enemy territory.
The existing 900th Kfir Brigade will also be turned into a rapid movement lethal force and the IDF will purchase much more precision weapons such as attack drones and missile interception systems.
The Israeli army will also improve the operational capabilities of existing corps regarding asymmetrical warfare and will improve communication between these different corps including communication between commanders of ground forces and pilots of IAF warplanes.
To achieve this better comprehensive communication the Israeli military will use “a computer program that the military refers to as the “Waze of War,” a play on the name of a popular navigation app, which will allow commanders to easily see targets on a map as well as the various methods they could use to strike them — artillery, ground troops, fighter jets, drones, etc,” according to Israeli journalist Judah Ari Gross.
Bennett said that the Israeli military will be more lethal, fast and strong and as we will see it will be necessary because Iran hasn’t changed her behavior after the assassination of its star-strategist Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani who was killed by an American drone on January 3rd this year.
The second event regarding Iran’s growing threat to Israel took place on Thursday night.
That night between 11 and 12 PM IAF warplanes launched Delilah cruise missiles at Iranian military facilities near Damascus and killed seven Iranians and Shiite fighters while destroying new advanced weapons which were delivered by an Iranian Boeing 747 shortly before the Israeli missile strikes.
Sources inside Syria reported furthermore that Ishmail Ghaani the new commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps arrived on the same plane in Damascus but apparently he wasn’t among the seven victims who died as a result of the Israeli strikes.
The same Syrian sources claimed that at least ten Delilah cruise missiles were launched by the IDF jets from the Golan Heights something that seems to be true because shortly before the new Israeli attack on the Iranian axis IAF warplanes were spotted flying over the Sea of Galilee in the direction of the Golan Heights.
It could be the IAF decided to launch the missiles from the Golan Heights because of the presence of two Russian Sukhoi SU-35 fighter jets in the skies above southern Syria at the moment the Israeli air force wanted to strike the new delivery of Iranian sophisticated weapons to the Quds Force.
Asked about what exactly happened during an interview with the Haifa local radio station Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu ducked the question and claimed that maybe “the Belgian air force” had become active in the Syrian fray.
“I don’t know what happened at night. Maybe it was the Belgian air force,” Netanyahu quipped.
The IAF action against the new weapon delivery to the Quds Force came after Bennett addressed the growing Iranian threat last Tuesday and warned Iran that it had “nothing to look for in Syria.”
“For generations, we have been constantly fighting the arms of the Iranian octopus in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, and we have not focused enough on the weakening of Iran itself,” the Israeli DM said adding that Israel should strangle the head of the Octopus, meaning the regime in Tehran.
“We are in a continuous campaign to weaken the Iranian octopus. On the economic level, political, intelligence, military, and others,” he explained. “When [an] octopus’s arms beat you, don’t fight back with only your arms, but strangle the head. And so it is with Iran,” Bennett explained.
He and Kochavi think Iran will one day try to do what Mohsen Rezaei a former IRGC commander said on Lebanese TV last week.
“You should have no doubt about this. We would raze Tel Aviv to the ground for sure. We have been looking for such a pretext,” Rezaei told his interviewer.
Another Iranian commander, Brig. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the aerial division of the IRGC, again threatened Israel with annihilation and now openly said that Iran controls a 3000 km-wide Axis of Resistance from Yemen next to the Red Sea to Lebanon via Iraq and Syria.
“Today we are not only an Iranian Axis of Resistance. Rather, the scope of the Axis of Resistance extends from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and from Yemen’s Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement to Lebanon’s Hezbollah,” according to Hajizadeh.
Apparently, the Iranians have come to the conclusion that it no longer makes sense to deny their support for Ansar Allah and their intention to hit Israel with missiles from Yemenite territory after the US Navy last week seized a giant weapon transport bound for Ansar Allah in the Red Sea.
The USS Normandy, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, seized 150 ‘Dehlavieh’ anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), which are Iranian-manufactured copies of the Russian Kornet ATGM and a large number of other missiles and weapons, according to the US military.
Hezbollah in Lebanon, meanwhile made another provocative move on Saturday and revealed a giant statue of slain Quds commander Qassem Soleimani who points to the Israeli border near the village of Maroun al-Ras.
A video of the inauguration of the statue showed Hezbollah terrorists cheering Allah Hu Akbar as they stood along Hezbollah and Lebanese flags while a Palestinan Authority flag accompanied the Soleimani statue.
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