Waving piece of downed drone, PM threatens direct military action against Iran
Brandishing a fragment of an Iranian drone downed over northern Israel a week ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned that Israel could strike the Islamic Republic directly and cautioned Tehran not to “test Israel’s resolve.”
“Mr. Zarif, do you recognize this? You should, it’s yours. You can take back with you a message to the tyrants of Tehran — do not test Israel’s resolve!” proclaimed Netanyahu at the Munich Security Conference, which was also attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The Iranian drone, which entered northern Israel from Syria near the Jordan border last Saturday, was shot down by an Israeli attack helicopter. In response to the drone incursion, Israeli jets attacked the mobile command center from which it was operated, the army said last week.
During the reprisal raid, one of the eight Israeli F-16 fighter jets that took part in the operation was apparently hit by a Syrian anti-aircraft missile and crashed. The Israeli Air Force then conducted a second round of airstrikes, destroying between a third and half of Syria’s air defenses, according to IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.
The flareup on the northern border marked the first direct confrontation between the Israeli air force and the Iranian regime on Israeli territory. Israel has warned of growing Iranian entrenchment in neighboring Syria and has said it will not abide an Iranian military presence on its borders.
“Through its proxies — Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza — Iran is devouring huge swaths of the Middle East,” said Netanyahu.
“Israel will not allow Iran’s regime to put a noose of terror around our neck,” he added. “We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act if necessary not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”
US Calls for Action to Halt Iran’s Growing ‘Network of Proxies’
US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called on Saturday for more forceful action to halt Iran’s development of what he said was an increasingly powerful network of proxy armies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.Iranian foreign minister: Israel's 'myth of invincibility' has crumbled
McMaster accused Iran of escalating a campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East by building and arming “Hezbollah-style” proxy armies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere as it has done in Lebanon.
The goal was to weaken Arab governments and turn the proxy forces against those states if they pursued policies that ran counter to Tehran’s interests, he said.
“So the time is now, we think, to act against Iran,” he told the Munich Security Conference, calling on US allies to halt trade that was helping underwrite the expansion of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military and economic force in the Islamic Republic.
The United States deems Lebanon’s Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
“What’s particularly concerning is that this network of proxies is becoming more and more capable,” he said.
Iran has denied accusations that it meddles in the affairs of its Middle East neighbours and has dismissed suggestions it stop supporting groups such as Hezbollah.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday the shooting down of an Israeli jet after bombing an Iranian site in Syria had shattered Israel's "so-called invincibility", reacting to a critical speech delivered earlier by Israel's premier.
"Israel uses aggression as a policy against its neighbours," Zarif told the Munich Security Conference, accusing Israel of "mass reprisals against its neighbours and daily incursions into Syria, Lebanon."
"Once the Syrians have the guts to down one of its planes it's as if a disaster has happened," Zarif said.
He was responding to Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the conference hours before, in which the Israeli prime minister, holding a piece of what he said was an Iranian drone, accused Iran of trying to impose an "empire" across the Middle East.
Zarif described Netanyahu's address to the conference as a "cartoonish circus."
"The entire speech was trying to evade the issue... What has happened in the past several days is the so-called invincibility [of Israel] has crumbled," he said of the February 10 downing of an Israeli jet.