Iran Guard Commanders Boast Of Power, Claim US Weakness

Lieberman was speaking at a security conference on Tuesday where Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Iran is at the most advanced stage of acquiring nuclear weapons and Israel reserves the right to confront Tehran, with or without a nuclear agreement.

Israel, itself widely believed to have nuclear weapons, has long argued that the 2015 deal was too weak to prevent Iran from pursuing a bomb. Former US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, describing it as too soft, and Iran responded by violating some of the deal's restrictions. President Joe Biden's administration aims to revive it.

Israel has also complained that the nuclear agreement does nothing to rein in Iran's ballistic missile program, or hostile activity by Iranian-backed militia.

"The Iranians have encircled the State of Israel with missiles while they sit safely in Tehran," Bennett said. "To chase the terrorist du jour sent by the (Iranian covert) Qods Force does not pay off anymore. We must go for the dispatcher."

Speaking separately, the chief of Israel's air force offered cooperation with Gulf Arab partners against Iranian-made attack drones, a rare public airing of the possibility of joint operations.

A broadcaster run by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, Al Masirah TV, said three air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition had hit a residential district of the capital.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

In a statement reported by the Saudi state news agency (SPA) on Twitter, the coalition said air strikes had been conducted against "legitimate military targets" in Sanaa.

It described the ballistic missile sites as "secret" and said one of "high-value" had been destroyed.

The coalition said that "the secret positions" had used hospitals, organizations and civilians as human shields.

Residents told Reuters the explosions had rocked the northern neighborhoods of the city, and said two military sites had been attacked.

The Houthis have repeatedly launched cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia using drones and missiles since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the movement ousted the Saudi-backed government from the capital.

The Houthi movement said on Saturday it had fired 14 drones at several Saudi cities, including at Saudi Aramco facilities in Jeddah.

The conflict is widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Reuters Report

Gantz also said that these sites were also used to store combat drones.

Iran’s military drone program has expanded in recent years and UAV’s have been more frequently used in recent months both on land and at sea.

Separately, the chief of Israel's air force proposed working with Arab partners - such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with which Israel formalized ties last year - against the drone threat.

Iran has been accused of attacking tankers in the Persian Gulf region since 2019 when several vessels were hit by what was described as limpet mines. Iranian naval forces have also seized tankers, most recently in late October, when they forced a Vietnamese-flagged tanker into Iranian waters.

Gantz made the allegation, which he described as a first public disclosure, during a televised speech at a security conference hosted by Reichman University.

Chabahar is a port city on the Sea of Oman near Pakistan from where Iranian forces can project power into the Indian Ocean and to the shores of Oman. Frequent naval drills take place in the region.

Javad Rahmati, deputy governor of Eastern Azarbaijan province said the provincial capital Tabriz is enveloped in smug because from late summer power plants were ordered to switch from natural gas to mazut, a heavy diesel fuel banned in most of the world.

This week, Tehran, Esfahan, Mashhad and Arak reported heavy pollution and people at higher risk were advised to stay indoors.

Iran has the second largest gas reserves in the world but because of lack of investment and advanced technologies it is unable to produce more than what it extracts now, which is around 700-750 million cubic meters a day. Domestic usage has climbed to 530 million cubic meters a day officials announced this week, leaving little for industries and export.

Iran has the world’s cheapest energy prices in par with Venezuela, which is the main factor in high consumption, while various sanctions have made it difficult to upgrade its oil and gas industries or to adopt more alternative fuels.

The ministry, tweeting the news, did not say how many people were arrested or specify their nationalities. It described them as "linked with terrorist groups in Iran" and said they were "plotting terrorist operations against security and civil peace".

Bahrain, host to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and other international naval operations, has often accused Shiite Muslim Iran of seeking to subvert the Sunni-ruled kingdom, which has a Shiite majority. Iran has denied such charges.

The island state was the only Gulf Arab state to witness a sizeable pro-democracy uprising in the 2011 "Arab Spring", from a largely Shi'ite opposition movement, which it quashed with help from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Last year, Bahrain said it had foiled a "terrorist attack" backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iranian officials and government-controlled media routinely attack Bahrain’s royal family and its close ties with Saudi Arabia.