Israel accuses Iran of supplying Syria with weapons to attack it
● Netanyahu says he will fight back as Trump decides on nuclear deal
Isreali prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of supplying advanced weapons to Syria that pose a danger to Israel, saying it is better to confront Tehran sooner rather than later.
Israel has repeatedly warned it will not tolerate a lasting Iranian military presence in neighbouring Syria.
The country is believed to have been behind recent airstrikes on Syrian military bases that killed Iranian soldiers, prompting Tehran to vow revenge.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Mr Netanyahu told the Israeli Cabinet yesterday that Iran had delivered advanced weapons to Syria “in order to attack us both on the battlefield and on the home front”.
“We are determined to block Iran’s aggression against us even if this means a struggle,” he said. “Better now than later. We do not want escalation, but we are prepared for any scenario.”
Israel has long viewed Iran as its biggest threat because of Tehran’s nuclear activities, its support for armed groups across the region and its leaders’ frequent calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
In recent years, Iran has provided crucial military support to Syrian president Bashar Assad.
Mr Netanyahu’s remarks came as US president Donald Trump weighs up whether to withdraw America from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
The Israeli prime minister was an outspoken opponent of the deal, which required Iran to limit its nuclear enrichment in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Mr Netanyahu said the deal would not prevent Iran – Israel’s most bitter enemy – from reaching nuclear weapons capability. Last week Mr Netanyahu said a “half tonne” of Iranian nuclear documents seized by Israeli intelligence revealed Iran had lied about its past efforts to produce nuclear weapons. He did not provide any evidence Iran had violated the 2015 nuclear deal, but said the documents proved Tehran could not be trusted.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, but has never publicly disclosed its arsenal.
European countries, which have been pressing Mr Trump to stick with the deal, said Mr Netanyahu’s presentation only reinforced the importance of the agreement, which provides for inspections.
Iran’s president has warned Mr Trump that pulling the United States out of the nuclear deal with world powers would be a “historic regret”.
President Hassan Rouhani made the comments yesterday in the city of Sabzevar while on a tour of Iran’s Razavi Khorasan province.
Mr Rouhani said: “If [the US] opts to pull out of the nuclear deal, it will soon realise that this decision will become a historic regret for them.”
He also assured Iranians that “no change will occur in our lives next week” regardless of Mr Trump’s decision.
The US president faces a selfimposed 12 May deadline over the 2015 nuclear deal, which he has long criticised.
Iran has faced economic trouble in recent weeks, with some analysts blaming the uncertainty surrounding the accord. Billions of dollars are on the line for international corporations. Virtually all multinational corporations do business or banking in the US, meaning any return to pre-deal sanctions could torpedo deals made after the 2015 agreement came into force.
That threat alone has been enough to scare risk-averse firms like Boeing Co. into slow walking deals.
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal lifted crippling economic sanctions that had locked Iran out of international banking and the global oil trade. In return, Tehran limited its enrichment of uranium, reconfigured a heavy-water reactor so it could not produce plutonium and reduced its uranium stockpile.