IRAN EXPERT: DETERRING IRAN IN SYRIA KEY, BUT STILL FAR FROM DIRECT ATTACK
IRAN EXPERT: DETERRING IRAN IN SYRIA KEY, BUT STILL FAR FROM DIRECT ATTACK
An Iran expert told The Jerusalem Post that deterring Iran with military force in Syria should continue, but not to expect open attacks on Iranian soil despite public statements on the issue by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.
INSS Arms Control Director Emily Landau also told the Post on Thursday that clandestine and cyber operations in the Islamic Republic itself were other ways to try to alter Iranian behavior.
In response to a question at a press conference with foreign media on Wednesday about whether he would engage Iran inside its territory, Netanyahu said he would not rule out acting militarily inside Iran’s borders if necessary for Israeli security.
“I’m not ruling out doing anything we need to defend ourselves. For the moment, Israel is the only military in the world that is directly engaging Iranian forces. We are doing that in Syria and pulling them back,” he said.
Landau said that the prime minister’s “statements are far from precise and in response to a question: Will Israel do what it needs to do to ensure its survival?”
“According to foreign sources, Israel has already acted within Iran,” she said in noting targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists mostly during the era of then-Mossad director Meir Dagan 2002-2011 and “when the Israeli Mossad took action in January [2018] and took out [Iran’s] nuclear files.”
Regarding clandestine actions against the Islamic Republic within its territory, she said that the Mossad’s appropriation of Iran’s nuclear files had been more effective than the assassinations of nuclear scientists.
She said a less noticed positive aspect of the operation to obtain Iran’s nuclear files was that it also rattled Iran about what Israel was capable of doing deep in Iranian territory, without it even knowing, if a conflict did escalate.
Read more: The Jerusalem Post
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