WarSclerotic

The IDF will continue to strike at Iranian target in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after Russia announced plans to transfer to Syria an advanced anti-missile system known as the S-300.

“Israel has been very successful in the last three years in preventing Iran’s military buildup in Syria as well as its attempts to deliver lethal weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Netanyahu said.

He spoke before departing for New York where he plans to meet with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the General Assembly, for what will be their fifth, face-to-face encounter.

Russian plans with regard to the S-300, which the US also opposes, will be an important part of that conversation. Israel fears that the S-300, will make it more difficult for the IDF to execute air raids against Iranian targets.

The decision to transfer the S-300 comes after a Russian war plane was shot down in Syria on September 17, leading to the loss of 15 Russian military personnel. Russia has blamed Israel, while Israel in turn has accused Syria and Iran of downing the plane.

Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone on Monday night and agreed to continue their security coordination in Syria.

“Since the tragic events in the Syrian skies, I have spoken twice with President Putin, expressing deep sorrow about the loss of lives of the Russia crew on the plane, that was irresponsibly shot down by Syrian fire,” Netanyahu said.

On Tuesday morning Netanyahu held a special security cabinet meeting and brief the ministers on events with Syria, Russia and Iran.

The cabinet ministers also expressed sorrow over the loss of Russian lives, Netanyahu said.

“We will continue to act to prevent the Iranian military build up in Syria and to continue with the security coordination between the IDF and the Russian army,” Netanyahu said.

He added that he and Putin had agreed that representatives from the Israeli and Russian armies would meet soon to discuss continued coordination in Syria.

“We will do what is necessary to defend Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said.

Intelligence Services Minister Israel Katz warned Iran not to attack Israel after the Islamic Republic blamed the Jewish state and vowed retaliation for an attack on an Iranian military parade Saturday that killed at least 25 people.

Speaking at his annual Succot party near his home on Moshav Kfar Ahim in the northern Negev, the minister in charge of Israel’s intelligence agencies predicted that the regime of Ayatollahs in Iran would soon disappear.

“Israel had no involvement in the Iran explosion,” Katz said. “But if they attack us, we will respond with full force.”

Katz also threatened Hezbollah, saying that if it attacks Israel, its leader Hassan Nasrallah would be harmed and “Lebanon will pay a heavy price and will return many generations backward.”

Regarding Iran’s involvement in Syria, Katz said that “if the Iranian undermining does not stop, Israel will be forced to continue doing everything possible to defend itself.”

He said that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was exclusively responsible for the downing of the Russian plane and the death of its 15 passengers. As for the Gaza periphery, Katz said there would be no tolerance for terror tunnels, missiles, mortars and kites.

Turning his fire to the media, Katz complained about the negative coverage of the new Jerusalem rail line that goes to Ben-Gurion International Airport and not yet directly to Tel Aviv as he had promised.

“The press has been off the rails with its criticism,” he told the crowd of thousands of Likud activists. “The media is upset because it was the Likud that inaugurated the rail line to Jerusalem. But it will be the public who will give the answer to the press.”

Katz, who correctly predicted 30 seats for the Likud in his Succot party four years ago, said the party would “win 40 mandates and maybe even more” in the next election that will be held in 2019.

NEW YORK — Months after the UN General Assembly voted to rebuke US President Donald Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, on Tuesday he warned the world to brace for more policy changes that would rile the status quo of a conflict that has been frozen for decades.

Trump’s second speech to the international body only briefly touched on Middle East peace. But what he said was telling and reflective of recent comments from members of his peace team who are beginning to preview a plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace that will buck conventional norms long governing the process.

The president was channeling Jared Kushner, his son-in-law leading the peace effort, who in an interview with The New York Times earlier this month, said the administration was intentionally slaughtering sacred cows of the conflict in order to disrupt the dis- cussion.

“There were too many false realities that were created – that people worship – that I think needed to be changed,” Kushner said on the anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords.

Similarly, the president in his speech said the aim of peace “is advanced, not harmed, by acknowledging the obvious facts.

“America’s policy of principled realism means we will not be held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies and so-called experts who have been proven wrong over the years, time and time again,” Trump told the gathering.

This is the administration’s main explanation and defense of Trump’s actions on Jerusalem, as well as its decision to defund the UN agency on Palestinian refugees which – according to the peace team – perpetuates a narrative on the status of refugees unhelpful to the pursuit of peace.

While Trump’s comments on the peace plan were brief, they at the very least signal policy growth from a year ago, when he addressed the UN General Assembly for the first time. In that speech, he made no mention of the peace process.

NEW YORK – Iran’s president struck back at Donald Trump on Tuesday, hours after the US leader delivered a speech castigating the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic.

Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, Hassan Rouhani accused the Trump administration of having a “Nazi disposition” within minutes of opening his remarks, later stating: “The United States’ understanding of international relations is authoritarian.”

“No state or nation can be brought to the negotiating table by force,” Rouhani said, using the majority of his time at the UN podium criticizing his American counterpart.

Trump withdrew in May from a nuclear deal with Iran brokered by the UN Security Council and Germany, providing Rouhani with ample opportunity to cite the agreement as rooted in international law. The council endorsed the 2015 agreement in a formal resolution.

“We consider nuclear knowledge an imperative and nuclear weapons prohibitive,” Rouhani said, warning that Tehran would meet “commitment for commitment, violation for violation, threat for threat.”

Earlier in the day, Trump characterized the Iranian government as a cancer on the Middle East.

“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death and destruction,” Trump said. They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.

“The Iranian people are rightly outraged that their leaders have embezzled billions of dollars from Iran’s treasury, seized valuable portions of the economy, and looted the people’s religious endowments, all to line their own pockets and send their proxies to wage war,” Trump continued. “Not good.”

In his speech, Rouhani argued that the most “pressing” issue facing the Middle East was Israel’s occupation of “Palestine” and characterized the state as a “racist,” “apartheid” regime, slamming its passage of the Nation-State Law.

Israel, he charged, is “equipped with a nuclear arsenal and blatantly threatening others with nuclear annihilation.”

Rouhani offered interviews to American journalists during his visit to New York in which he slammed Trump’s attempts to zero out Tehran’s oil exports and worsen its dire economic crisis. He said that Trump has repeatedly asked to meet, but that he would decline to do so until Trump comes back to negotiations on the basis of the 2015 nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The Iranian president suggested that Trump had pulled out of the agreement to scuttle “the legacy of his domestic political rivals.” Former president Barack Obama spearheaded the agreement.

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump‘s national security adviser John Bolton delivered an aggressive speech targeting Iran on Tuesday, warning the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Qassam Soleimani, not to “cross” the United States.

Addressing an American group that has campaigned for a hawkish approach to Iran’s nuclear program, called United Against a Nuclear Iran, John Bolton told the crowd that the US would use “every tool in its toolbox” to pursue Soleimani, and that “there will be hell to pay” for regime officials who have targeted US troops and interests region-wide.

“The days of impunity for Tehran and its enablers are over,” Bolton said. “The murderous regime and its supporters will face significant consequences if they do not change their behavior. Let my message today be clear: We are watching, and we will come after you.”

Soleimani led a strategy in Iraq of using proxies to kill American soldiers during the US-led war there, and has spearheaded Tehran’s military efforts to keep Bashar Assad in power in Syria.

Before becoming national security adviser, Bolton advocated for regime change in Iran, characterizing the government there as corrupt, dictatorial, undemocratic and destabilizing to the region as a whole. The Trump administration has adopted the essence of Bolton’s view without calling for regime change outright.

The presidents of Iran and the US traded insults in dueling speeches at the UN on Tuesday, with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani calling US President Donald Trump an authoritarian figure with a “Nazi disposition.”

“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction,” Trump charged. “They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations.  Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who also addressed the UANI gathering, coordinated with his speech the release of a 45-page glossed State Department guide to Iran’s “destructive activities.”

“The United States will hold the regime in Tehran accountable for any attack that results in injury to our personnel or damage to our facilities,” Pompeo said. “America will respond swiftly and decisively in [defense of] American lives, and we will respond against the source of the attack on American interests.”