Accelerating US-Israeli Military Cooperation Against Iranian Threat

Israeli soldiers stand next to tanks and APCs ahead of a large Armored Corps exercise that will take place in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, 14 November 2022. EPA/ATEF SAFADI

Ramallah: Asharq Al Awsat

09:57-17 November 2022 AD ـ 23 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1444 AH

Ramallah: Asharq Al Awsat

09:57-17 November 2022 AD ـ 23 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1444 AH

Accelerating US-Israeli Military Cooperation Against Iranian Threat

Israel and the United States are developing “joint military capabilities at accelerated pace" to counter evolving threats in the Middle East, and especially against Iran, Israel’s army chief of staff Aviv Kohavi said on Wednesday.

Kohavi made the remarks during his meeting with Commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) General Michael Kurilla, who arrived in Israel on Tuesday in the fourth official visit since he assumed his post in April.

“We are operating together on all fronts to gather intelligence, neutralize threats, and prepare for various scenarios in either one or multiple arenas.”

The Israeli army said in a statement that Kurilla, alongside commanding general of the Israeli army’s Northern Command Major General Ori Gordin, visited the Rosh HaNikra crossing point on the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon and the Alpha Line between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights.

Gordin briefed Kurilla on the security challenges along each border, the threat posed by the Lebanese Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and the strategic importance inherent in preserving security on the Israeli-Lebanese maritime border.

Kurilla also reviewed the efforts exerted to prevent Iran from positioning its arms on Syrian territory and recruiting citizens to carry out operations.

The army said Kurilla met with Kohavi and other senior military officers to discuss Israel’s efforts to obstruct Iran’s plans to establish a large military presence in Syria and transfer its weapons to Hezbollah.

Kurilla also visited the Nevatim Air Force Base southeast of Beer Sheva and the 116th “Lions of the South” Squadron, which operates the F-35i “Adir” aircraft.

Kohavi, Commanding Officer of the Israeli Air Force Major General Tomer Bar, and Nevatim Air Force Base commander Brigadier General Gilad Keinan accompanied Kurilla.

Kurilla and the army leaders discussed opportunities to improve integrated air and missile defense and regional security.

He later met incoming army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, who is due to take office on January 17.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo

Asharq Al Awsat

15:43-7 January 2025 AD ـ 08 Rajab 1446 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

15:43-7 January 2025 AD ـ 08 Rajab 1446 AH

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party who tapped into blue-collar anger over immigration and globalisation and revelled in minimising the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally (Rassemblement National).
Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting - as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder in 1972 of the National Front, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly.

Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: his multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and condoning war crimes dogged the National Front, according to Reuters.
His declaration that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history and that the Nazi occupation of France was "not especially inhumane" were for many people repulsive.
"If you take a book of a thousand pages on World War Two, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail," Le Pen said in the late 1990s, doubling down on earlier remarks.
Those comments provoked outrage, including in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Commenting on Le Pen's death, President Emmanuel Macron said: "A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years, which is now a matter for history to judge."
Le Pen helped reset the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, harnessing discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.
He reached a presidential election run-off in 2002 but lost by a landslide to Jacques Chirac. Voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.
Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union, which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment felt by many Britons who later voted to leave the EU.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father's death during a layover in Kenya as she returned from the French overseas territory of Mayotte.
Born in Brittany in 1928, Jean-Marie Le Pen studied law in Paris in the early 1950s and had a reputation for rarely spending a night out on the town without a brawl. He joined the Foreign Legion as a paratrooper fighting in Indochina in 1953.
Le Pen campaigned to keep Algeria French, as an elected member of France's parliament and a soldier in the then French-run territory. He publicly justified the use of torture but denied using such practices himself.
After years on the periphery of French politics, his fortunes changed in 1977 when a millionaire backer bequeathed him a mansion outside Paris and 30 million francs, around 5 million euros ($5.2 million) in today's money.
The helped Le Pen further his political ambitions, despite being shunned by traditional parties.
"Lots of enemies, few friends and honor aplenty," he told a website linked to the far-right. He wrote in his memoir: "No regrets."
In 2011, Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by daughter Marine, who campaigned to shed the party's enduring image as antisemitic and rebrand it as a defender of the working class.
She has reached - and lost - two presidential election run-offs. Opinion polls make her the frontrunner in the next presidential election, due in 2027.
The rebranding did not sit well with her father, whose inflammatory statements and sniping forced her to expel him from the party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen described as a "betrayal" his daughter's decision to change the party's name in 2018 to National Rally, and said she should marry to lose her family name.
Their relationship remained difficult but he had warm words for her when Macron defeated her in 2022: "She did all she could, she did very well."

Accelerating US-Israeli Military Cooperation Against Iranian Threat

Accelerating US-Israeli Military Cooperation Against Iranian Threat

Most Viewed

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

لم تشترك بعد