On the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow on Monday, the government and Israeli army spokespersons launched on Sunday an unprecedented campaign in which they warned of Iran’s influence in Lebanon and Syria.
Netanyahu will meet in Russia with President Vladimir Putin and discuss Iran’s influence.
Israeli Defense Forces Spokesman Brigadier General Ronen Manelis said that Lebanon’s “Hezbollah” party was imposing its power on political leaderships in Lebanon, adding that this threatens Israel and could lead to a devastating war with the neighboring country.
He warned that due to the failings of its authorities, Lebanon has turned into one large missile factory.
"One in every three or four houses in southern Lebanon is a headquarters, a post, a weapons depot or a ‘Hezbollah’ hideout,” he said.
In an indirect reference to the May 6 parliamentary elections, Manelis said that this year will be “a test for the Lebanese entity” in whether the Lebanese will allow Iran and “Hezbollah” to exploit the Lebanese state.
“Will ‘Hezbollah’ succeed in officially transforming Lebanon into a state sponsored by Iran?”
Israel's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said there are 82,000 fighters under Iran’s authority in Syria.
The ambassador said his country is releasing this classified information because “it is vital for the world to understand that if we turn a blind eye in Syria, the Iranian threat will only grow.”
Danon added that Iran was recruiting extremists in Syria to further threaten Israel and to further terrorize the entire free world.
Speaking at his weekly cabinet session in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that during his meeting with US President Donald Trump at the Davos Economic Forum last Thursday, they “discussed the need to confront the Iranian aggression in the region and to face all of Iran’s attempts to possess nuclear arms through the failed Nuclear deal.”
A high-ranking political source in Tel Aviv said on Sunday that “Netanyahu was urgently heading to Moscow because we are now in a situation where the Russians do not seem to care about the threats of the Iranian presence in Syria.”
