By Zein Kahlil
JERUSALEM (AA) - A potential attack on Iran “will be lethal, precise, and especially surprising.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday, according to a statement from his office.
“They won't understand what happened or how it happened, but they'll see the results,” he told members of a division within Israeli Military Intelligence responsible for collecting visual data.
“You've witnessed the recent attacks by the Iranians, which were aggressive but failed because they were inaccurate. No air force assets were harmed, no aircraft were harmed, and no soldiers or civilians were injured,” said Gallant.
In early October, Israel reported that Iran launched about 180 missiles in an attack Tehran described as “retaliation” for the assassinations of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Abbas Nilforoushan.
The Israeli army admitted the following day that the strike had caused damage to its airbases.
Israeli officials later said preparations for a significant and forceful response against Tehran were ongoing, with them having no intention of letting the attack go unanswered.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a limited security consultation late Tuesday with several Cabinet ministers and top security officials to discuss the operation against Iran, according to Israeli media.
US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu held their first telephone conversation Wednesday since August. The call lasted 50 minutes, during which they discussed Tel Aviv’s potential responses to Iran, according to Israeli media.
The developments come as Israel has mounted massive airstrikes across Lebanon against what it claims Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23 that have killed more than 1,250 people, injured 3,618, and displaced more than 1.2 million.
The aerial campaign is an escalation in a year-long cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of Tel Aviv’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed nearly 42,000 people, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.
At least 2,119 people have since been killed and 10,019 injured in Israeli attacks in Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities.
Despite international warnings that the Middle East region was on the brink of a regional war amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, Tel Aviv expanded the conflict by launching a ground invasion into southern Lebanon on Oct. 1.
*Writing by Mohammad Sio