Liberman Attacks Iran Deal and Calls for a Harder Israeli Response

Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Liberman said Monday at the opening of his faction meeting that the new US-Iran agreement would have drawn accusations of treason from Benjamin Netanyahu if it had been signed under a previous government. He used the speech to lay out what he described as Israel’s response plan to the deal’s consequences.

Liberman said Israel must tell Washington that it rejects any linkage between the Iranian front and the Lebanese front. If Hezbollah fires missiles, loitering munitions or drones at Israel, he said, Israel should respond forcefully and strike the group’s centers of gravity, command and control, in Dahiyeh and Baalbek. “There will be no sanctuary for terrorists in Lebanon,” he said.

He also warned against allowing Hezbollah to strengthen, saying Israel should not wait for Iran’s forward position in Lebanon to become, in his words, a monster with tens of thousands of precision missiles and other weapons aimed at the country’s infrastructure and population centers. Israel, he said, should not hesitate to launch a preemptive strike against any Hezbollah buildup.

On Iran itself, Liberman proposed a new formula, saying that every Iranian launch at Israel should be answered by destroying Kharg Island and the port of Bandar Abbas. He added that the Mossad should now focus on one mission only, the overthrow of the ayatollah regime. He concluded by urging the security establishment to urgently establish a missile corps with at least 20,000 ballistic and cruise missiles, about 30,000 drones and UAVs, including naval drones, and 24,000 interceptor missiles.