“If Iran fires missiles at Israel, Israel will strike Iran with force.” Defense Minister Israel Katz said that on Monday, and he added that the two countries could be at war “tomorrow.” He told military and diplomatic reporters that the IDF has been ordered to prepare for an Israeli-led operation inside Iran if it comes to that.
The briefing covered Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Turkey and the future shape of Israel’s armed forces. On Iran, Katz was blunt. “There is no equation we will accept in which Iran fires at Israel,” he said, adding that Washington has been told so. “The IDF is just waiting for it and is on alert. There are targets.”
Two ways the war could restart
Katz said Israel has no wish to disrupt President Donald Trump’s diplomacy with Tehran. But on self-defense, he said, “there are no compromises, not in Lebanon and not in Iran.” He sketched two paths back to fighting. Either Trump decides the negotiations have run their course and wants to resume strikes, or Iran attacks first. In that case, he said, “that is the third Iran war,” and it “could happen within two days.”
His order to the IDF is to prepare a “blue-and-white operation,” meaning one led by Israel without reliance on outside forces. Katz said the military is ready to defend and to attack, and that the home front would be put on alert, as in the last confrontation, if a concrete danger appears.
Iran still has missiles and can launch them, he said, but Israeli offensive power could quickly suppress that fire. He credited earlier operations with “enormous damage” to Iran and the killing of “the head of their extermination program.” Iran’s leadership is in bunkers, he said, as are the heads of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Asked about Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, he replied that he is “marked for death.” He called the Iranians “good horsetraders” angling for concessions, and said Israel will not let them build a nuclear weapon. A deal that achieves that would be fine with him: “If they do it through an agreement, all the better.”
Whether the United States would join in is a separate matter. “The defensive partnership with the U.S. exists,” Katz said, but Israel’s response to an Iranian attack is “not conditional on anything.”
Lebanon: no withdrawal
Katz said he and the prime minister had wanted to hit Dahieh after a weekend of fire on Israeli communities, though doing so was complicated by the Americans. He said Hezbollah chose to attack once the Iran operation began and paid heavily. Its leader, Naim Qassem, “whom we have not yet gotten our hands on,” made that decision. More than 300 fighters were killed, Katz said, and the toll exceeded that of the pager operation.
One of his central decisions, he said, was not to evacuate northern residents again. Some ministers opposed that choice, as well as the move into Syria and the capture of the Mount Hermon summit. Others wanted to go as far as the Litani River.
On leaving, he left no room. “I suggest people not hold their breath waiting for the area from which Israel will withdraw. It will not happen,” he said. In the western and central sectors of southern Lebanon almost all terror infrastructure and villages have been destroyed, he said, and 73% in the east. Some 200,000 residents of the security zone along the yellow line will stay away for a long time, including those from 24 border villages.
Israel had offered the Lebanese army a pilot program before the operation on the Ali Tahar ridge, Katz said, and the army refused because it wanted no clash with Hezbollah. “The Lebanese army will not become lions,” he said. Under the arrangement now planned, that army is to operate between the yellow line and the Litani, with Israel demanding that Hezbollah fighters and weapons be cleared from the whole area. Katz said he supports American training of special Lebanese units.
He also said he witnessed four calls in which Trump tried to tie the Iran and Lebanon fronts together. Netanyahu resisted, but on a fifth call the two leaders settled on a ceasefire. Israel allocated 2 billion shekels ($540 million) to counter fiber-optic drones.
Turkey, Syria, Gaza, the Houthis
Katz doubted Trump’s suggestion that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to join the war on Iran’s side. “He didn’t even respond to Iran’s missiles against him,” he said. Turkey is “not yet an enemy state,” he added, though Erdogan is “becoming more extreme.” Syria is the main friction point, and Israel will not leave it.
On Gaza, he said Israel will not let Hamas rearm and that the mission there is not complete. On the Houthis, he said their latest fire went unanswered after a calculation between fronts, but that they are “a more significant threat than was presented.” Katz also named space as a priority, with a goal of ranking among the world’s top three countries in offensive and defensive capabilities there.
Xinhua reported that his remarks followed a weekend of fresh US-Iran strikes, despite the recently signed memorandum of understanding. The US hit Iranian military targets, citing aggression against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired ballistic missiles and drones at US facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Sources
- Israel could go to war with Iran 'tomorrow,' Katz warns
- Israeli DM warns Israel could be at war with Iran as early as "tomorrow"
