IOF Chief Warns of Iranian Threat, Acknowledges for First Time ‘Israel’ Attacked Iraq

December 25, 2019

Israeli Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned Wednesday that the occupation military is preparing for a limited confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

“There is a possibility that we will face a limited confrontation with Iran and we are preparing for it,” Kochavi said at a conference in Herzilya.

“We will continue to act and responsibly,” the top Israeli military officer said, adding that it would have been better had the Zionist entity not been the only one engaged in the effort to stop Iran.

The Israeli military he said, is carrying out operations both publicly and below the radar, to ‘prevent the enemy from obtaining’ precision missiles, even if those operations bring about a confrontation.

“We will not allow Iran to entrench itself in Syria, or in Iraq,” Kochavi said, publicly acknowledging for the first time that Israeli Air Force has attacked Iraq, allegedly against Iranian targets.

“Iraq is undergoing a civil war, when the Quds Force is operating there on a daily basis, when the country itself has turned into an ungoverned area. Advanced weapons are being smuggled by the Quds Force in Iraq on a monthly basis and we can’t allow that,” he said.

There’s been a change in threats, will all fronts active in trying to carry out rocket attacks against the Zionist regime, Kochavi was quoted as saying by The Jerusalem Post Israeli online newspaper.

And while over the years, Iran wasn’t regarded as an immediate threat, it’s transformed into “an enemy that we can see and that we deal with,” Kochavi said, adding that Israeli “ultimate goal is to instill in our enemies the feeling of despair and doubt in their ability to achieve their aggressive aims.”

“Iran continues to produce missiles that can reach our territory,” Kochavi said, explaining that the Iranian military industry is much larger than all the Israeli military industries combined allowing for them to produce more precise and long range rockets to threaten the Israeli homefront.

In addition, he warned that Quds forces in Syria as well as Hezbollah have spectrum barriers and advanced anti-aircraft missiles which can threaten Israeli jets, which nonetheless continue to have freedom of operation across the Middle East.

According to the chief of staff, while war is a solution to be used after all diplomatic solutions have been exhausted, “in the next war, be it with the north or with Gaza, the intensity of enemy firepower will be great.”

“There can be no war without casualties and I cannot not guarantee a short war,” he said. “We will need national resilience.”

Source: Israeli media