Tipping Point Quick Hits (10.26.23)
Israel warns Iran, U.S. positions carriers, and support for Israel grows
Israel Warns Iran About the Northern Front
On Sunday, Israel’s Economy Minister, Nir Barkat, warned Iran about the potential for the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group to open a second, northern front while Israel is already waging war against Hamas.
Barkat is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. He said Iran would be held responsible if the Iran-backed Hezbollah got involved:
“The plan of Iran is to attack Israel on all fronts. If we find they intend to target Israel, we will not just retaliate to those fronts, but we will go to the head of the snake, which is Iran,” Barkat said.
“The ayatollahs in Iran are not going to sleep [well] at night, we are going to make sure they pay a heavy price if, God forbid, they open the northern front,” he said.
Since the October 7 terror attack by Hamas, Israel has anticipated an expanded conflict should Hezbollah decide to take advantage of Israel’s attention to its war on Hamas. Israel is working to use a bombing campaign to destroy Hamas’ infrastructure and control over the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. But Israel is also evacuating residents living near border communities in the north.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also said that the United States “is concerned at the possibility of Iranian proxies escalating their attacks against our own personnel, our own people.” Remember, Iran has celebrated the actions of Hamas, which killed nearly 1,500 people and took hundreds of Israeli citizens hostage. Iran has also called on all Muslim nations to join the effort against Israel.
The United States has also warned Iran against taking advantage of this moment by expanding the attacks on Israel. But Barkat’s threat was much more dramatic than Blinken’s:
“Lebanon and Hezbollah are going to pay a heavy price, similar to what Hamas is going to pay. But that’s not enough,” Barkat said, warning against further escalation.
“The very clear message is that we are going to be going after the heads of Iran as well. When will we do that? When we decide,” Barkat said. “Israel has a very clear message to our enemies. We are saying to them, look what’s happening in Gaza—you are going to get the same treatment if you attack us. We are going to wipe you off the face of the earth.”
That’s powerful language, and it reminds me that Israel doesn’t just have enormous military capabilities in the form of jets, reserve troops and conventional firepower. Israel is also a nuclear threat. The number of nuclear weapons it possesses is unknown in the public realm, but most experts believe Israel to have a significant arsenal of nuclear warheads. At the beginning of the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Dayan, asked prime minister Golda Meir to “make ready” the nation’s nuclear weapons. Meir immediately said no. But history remembers that moment—and the request got the attention of the United States and the rest of the outside world.
And today, Barkat is not the only politician issuing dire warnings to Iran. Another member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, Tally Gotliv, has suggested that Israel consider using “doomsday weapons” in its own defense.
In an expanded war in the Middle East, could Israel use a nuclear weapon? Certainly not against Hamas or Hezbollah, which are in Israeli territories. A nearby nuclear blast in that region would impact Israel. But against Tehran, more than a thousand miles away?
It’s possible, but I hope not. Still, I have long thought that a bombing of Iran by Israel could be the start of the Ezekiel 38 war. Israeli political leaders are angry, and rightly so. Their language right now foreshadows the reality of the coming war.
More U.S. Forces Headed to the Middle East
In response to the potential for escalating attacks on Israel, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier group—including its fighter jets and related warships—to the eastern Mediterranean. There it will join another vessel, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is already stationed in the area.
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