Defense Minister Benny Gantz has warned that Iran is just 10 weeks away from amassing enough uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Speaking at a United Nations Security Council briefing, Gantz told ambassadors more attacks by the Iranian regime will happen unless immediate action is taken.
“Iran has violated all of the guidelines set in the JCPOA and is only around 10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon,” Gantz said. “Now is the time for deeds – words are not enough.”
He added: “It is time for diplomatic, economic and even military deeds, otherwise the attacks will continue.”
The meeting was also attended by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and came just one week after the Islamic Republic was accused of perpetrating a deadly drone strike on the Israeli-managed Mercer Street shipping vessel in the Gulf of Oman.
Lapid and Gantz have both said the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Saeed Ara Jani, masterminded the attack.
Israel carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon after a barrage of rockets was fired towards the northern city of Kiryat Shmona. A statement from the Israeli Air Force (IAF) said the retaliatory bombings targeted the locations from which the projectiles were launched, as well as infrastructure that facilitates terrorist attacks.
“IDF attacks will continue and even intensify in the face of terror attacks against the State of Israel and its citizens,” the IAF missive stated.
In response to the rockets fired from Lebanon toward Israel today, IDF artillery forces are currently striking targets along the Lebanese border.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 4, 2021
Two of the three rockets that were fired from Lebanon sparked large fires in open areas. The other fell short and landed within Lebanese territory. No injuries were reported.
Kiryat Shmona was forced to open bomb shelters across the city, although the military said residents living near the border could continue with their daily routines.
The airstrikes, which followed shelling by the IDF, marked the first such action since the Second Lebanon War in 2006. However, Israel has repeatedly had to defend itself from rocket fire and other assaults from the US-designated terrorist group Hezbollah.
A Foreign Ministry official has said Israel maintains contact with nearly all Arab countries, including those that are officially designated as “enemy states” such as Iraq.
Haim Regev, the outgoing director of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Division, revealed the Jewish state communicates with all countries in the region except Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, via a list of covert contacts.
Israel and Iraq have a long history of conflict, with Baghdad sending forces to fight against the Jewish state during wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Its former President Saddam Hussein also fired ballistic missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.
Israel has over the past few years carried out a number of tactical strikes on Iranian proxy targets within Iraqi territory.
Evidence of a biblical-era earthquake has been uncovered during excavations at the City of David National Park in Jerusalem. Archaeologists discovered a layer of destroyed artifacts, including pottery and storage jars, which broke during the collapse of a building.
The find appears to confirm an account in the Bible of a huge earthquake during the period of the Kingdom of Judah, some 2,800 years ago.
“We wondered what could have caused such a heavy layer of destruction and we looked for a reference in the biblical text. We then discovered that the earthquake that appears in the Bible in the books of Amos and Zechariah, occurred when the building we unearthed in the City of David collapsed,” said Dr. Joe Uziel and Dr. Ortal Chalaf, the Israel Antiquities Authority’s excavation directors.
They added: “The combination of the findings on the ground with the biblical description therefore led us to the conclusion that the earthquake that struck the land of Israel during the reign of Ozias, king of Judah, also struck the capital of the kingdom – Jerusalem.”
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Recommended Reading
- Iran’s New Hardline President Ebrahim Raisi to Take Oath Before Parliament (Times of Israel)
- The US Must Bolster the Iranian people, Not Their Brutal Regime
(Harold Rhode, Jewish News Syndicate) - Bari Weiss and Merav Michaeli on How Global Media Portrays Israel (Sam Sokol/JTA, Jerusalem Post)
- It’s Ethics Studies in Universities That Need Watching (Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Jewish News of Northern California)
- Israel: The ‘Start-Up Nation’ is now the ‘Biotech Nation’ – opinion (Yaky Yanay, Jerusalem Post)
