A return to the nuclear agreement with Iran would be bad, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi (pictured) warned while saying that the Israeli army was preparing various plans for a strike on the Islamic Republic.
Speaking on Tuesday at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Kochavi said in his opening remarks that “all our enemies are in a deep depression, both economically and because of the Coronavirus, and there is a deep distrust among everyone in the way their regimes deal with the issues.”
“Israel and the IDF have strengthened their alliances over the years. We have the strongest cooperation with the United States strategically and operationally, reaching a very high level of intimacy,” he noted.
He underscored that “returning to the nuclear agreement with Iran and even if an improved agreement is reached, it will be a bad agreement at the operational and strategic level, and therefore such an agreement must not be allowed.”
This stance, which is in tandem with that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, put Israel at odds with the new Biden Administration, which has announced its plans to seek a modified agreement with Iran. Israel has warned that a return to a deal would send the region into a nuclear arms race and would not block Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, a reality Israel cannot accept.
With Iran’s looming threat in mind, Kochavi said that he has “instructed the IDF to prepare a number of operational plans in addition to existing ones, and we are working on these plans, and we will open them up in the coming year. The plans must be on the table, practiced and ready for action.”
He further clarified that “if the 2015 nuclear deal had materialized, Iran would eventually have been able to move forward to obtain a bomb, as the agreement did not include restrictions that would prevent it in the end. Anything similar is a bad thing and should not be allowed.”
Speaking of a future war on Israel, he depicted a troubling picture of mass losses and massive rocket attacks on the country.
“This is an opportunity and an obligation for me to remind the citizens of the State of Israel in the clearest way that on the crucial day, during the war, a lot of missiles and rockets will fall here and it will not be easy,” he warned.
However, “in the face of this threat, we will launch a very widespread attack.”
“Attacking a single missile launcher, inside or next to a populated house, will prevent damage to an apartment building in Israel and thus prevent harm to dozens of people. It is our duty to attack this launcher, it is our duty to also attack the dozens and hundreds of launchers deployed in the field,” he added.
Israel has relatedly warned Lebanon and the United Nations that the Hezbollah terror organization is deeply entrenched within the civilian population in south Lebanon, and every fifth house serves as a weapons cache, many of them underneath the homes.
