Army spokesman says Israel tracked the attack plan ‘for a number of weeks,’ says each UAV was meant to carry several kilograms of explosives
By TOI STAFF
A satellite image showing a small base in the Syrian town of Aqrabah from which the Israeli military says Iran tried to launch explosive-laden drones into northern Israel from Syria in August 2019. (Israel Defense Forces)
The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they happen.
Official Iranian plane lands in Biarritz during G-7 — flight websites
PARIS — An official Iranian plane landed in Biarritz in southern France during a G-7 summit, flight-tracking websites say.
Flightradar24.com and planespotters.net both show a plane traveling from Tehran to Biarritz, although AFP is unable to confirm the landing or that an Iranian delegation had been invited.
IDF chief says Iranian general Soleimani ‘personally’ oversaw drone attack plans
IDF chief Aviv Kohavi says IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani personally led the plot to attack a number of targets in northern Israel with explosives-laden attack drones from Syria.
“The person who led this attack and commanded it was Qassem Soleimani personally. He funded, coached and trained Shiite operatives, who were supposed to carry it out,” Kohavi says in a video of a meeting in the IDF Northern Command late Saturday night, released by the military.
The army chief warns that the military must “prepare for any eventuality,” as Iran may retaliate against the Israeli strikes.
“We will [prepare] in the best way possible,” he says.
— Judah Ari Gross
Monitor raises death toll from Syria strike to 5
A war monitor raises the death toll from an Israeli strike on Iranian targets in Syria to five.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, two of those killed were operatives from the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and one was a member of an Iranian militia. It says the identity of the other two casualties are not yet known.
IDF: 4 Iranian operatives recently arrived in Syria to pilot kamikaze drones
The Israel Defense Forces says the attack drones that Iran intended to use against the Jewish state on Saturday night had been flown into Syria from Tehran several weeks ago, along with a number of Iranian military officials.
According to IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, four members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned to fly the explosive-laden kamikaze drones into a number of targets in northern Israel.
“Each one of these attack drones would carry several kilograms of explosives,” he says.
Conricus says the military has been monitoring the Iranian plot for “a number of weeks.”
Last Thursday, the IRGC-backed cell first tried to fly these attack drones into northern Israel from the Syrian village Erneh, the IDF spokesman says, but this effort was blocked by the Israeli military.
Conricus refuses to comment on the exact method used to thwart the attack, but says it was “not necessarily kinetic,” appearing to indicate that some method of electronic warfare was employed.
According to the spokesman, the Iranian drones used in the attack were of a similar variety that Tehran-backed militias have used elsewhere in the Middle East, namely by Yemen’s Houthis.
“The modus operandi is similar to what we have seen in other places in the Middle East — in Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” Conricus says.
He says the equipment, as well as a number of operatives, were flown in from Tehran through the international airport of Damascus.
The spokesman says their base of operations was in the village of Aqrabah, near Damascus.
Conricus says Israel sees Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime as responsible for the attacks as it aware of the plot and gave it de facto support by allowing it to take place.
— Judah Ari Gross
MK denies racism allegations for comparing Blue and White, Likud to ‘black and white’
Blue and White MK Ram Ben Barak pushes back against racism accusations for saying the difference between his party and the ruling Likud was “black and white.”
At a cultural event yesterday, Barak contrasted Blue and White with Likud, which he said is “against equality, clearly differentiates between Jews and Arabs… it harms the courts.”
“You want to call this right and left? Call it right and left. You want to call it black and white? Call it black and white. They’re black and we’re white,” Ben Barak said.
Hitting back at Ben Barak, Likud accuses him of using “racist slurs,” lumping together his comments with past criticism of Likud voters that was seen as racially charged.
“We will bring our voices to the ballot box and overcome this patronizing tone,” the party says in a statement.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who heads the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party Shas, calls on Blue and White to denounce the comments and says Ben Barak should “be ashamed.”
Ben Barak dismisses the criticism as “nonsense.”
“The intention was darkness and light, black and white, liberal and fascist. Anything else is simply not true. And it’s a pity to take it there,” he writes on Twitter.
Macron denies receiving OK to give message to Iran in name of G-7 leaders
BIARRITZ, France — French President Emmanuel Macron says he has no formal mandate to speak for the G-7 leaders in delivering a message to Iran, but says he would be able to address the issue in the context of what they agreed to during a dinner.
His comments come after US President Donald Trump denied agreeing to anything regarding how to negotiate with Iran. Macron described the dinner as “an informal discussion, free, intense, extremely long” that touched especially on the fires in the Amazon, the Ukrainian crisis and Russia.
He says Trump is the president of the “world’s number one power” who has to defend his voters’ interest, and had made his views on Iran and other subjects quite clear. Macron is walking a fine line as the host of this year’s G-7 summit of major democracies, which is focused on the threat of a global recession, climate change and other major issues. — AP
Analysts speculate drones that crashed in Beirut were Iranian, not Israeli
The release of a photograph of a drone that crashed in the Lebanese capital Beirut earlier Sunday morning casts doubt on the claim by the Hezbollah terror group that the craft belonged to the Israeli military, with some Israeli analysts speculating the unmanned aerial vehicle was in fact an Iranian model.
In the predawn hours of this morning, a UAV exploded in the air outside the offices of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, causing damage to the building. A second crashed nearby and was retrieved by the terror group.
Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese military claimed the drones belonged to Israel.
Official Lebanese state media has just released a photograph of the quadcopter-style UAV that crashed. The aircraft does not resemble any of the UAVs used by the Israeli military.
Several well-connected Israeli commentators, including a former IDF general, say the drone appeared to be of an Iranian design.
The Israel Defense Forces refuses to publicly comment on the incident, saying it does not comment on “foreign reports.”
Former head of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin, who now heads the esteemed Institute for National Security Studies think tank, speculates that the drone may have been part of a plot by Tehran to send armed drones into northern Israel to bomb military installations and national infrastructure, an attack that the IDF said it foiled late Saturday night with a series of airstrikes in Syria.
“Were Iranian drones prevented from taking off from the Beirut area?” Yadlin writes on Twitter.
The former intelligence chief says it appeared as though both Israel and Iran were looking to calm the situation following the late-night airstrikes.
— Judah Ari Gross
Body of Palestinian man found in West Bank
Police have found the body of a Palestinian man on a major highway in the West Bank.
According to a police statement, the man’s body was found on Route 60 near the Efrat settlement.
Police say officers are at the scene and a probe has been opened.
Trump denies giving OK to France to act as go-between with Iran
BIARRITZ, France (AP) — The first fissures emerge among G-7 leaders over how to deal with Iran, as US President Donald Trump denies he had signed on to an agreement on giving France a leading role as a go-between with the world’s major democracies.
Trump had tried to play down tensions among Group of Seven leaders after an intimate dinner Saturday in the southwest French resort of Biarritz, but comes out swiftly to dispute France’s claim that they had agreed to let French President Emmanuel Macron deliver a message to Iran on their behalf.
For several months, Macron has taken a lead role in trying to save the 2015 nuclear accord, which has been unraveling since Trump pulled the US out of the agreement.
No details are provided on what the G-7 message to Iran would be but Macron said the goal is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons and avoid a further escalation in tensions in the Middle East.
“I haven’t discussed that,” Trump says this morning. He describes the dinner as “very, very good” and blames the media for anything that implied otherwise.
— AP
BEIRUT — Prime Minister Saad Hariri condemns Israel for allegedly sending drones that fell over southern Beirut as a “blatant attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty.”
“This new aggression… forms a threat to regional stability and an attempt to push the situation towards more tension,” he says in a statement.
Hariri also charges that it was in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended a 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.
— AFP
Macron would be so proud to reenact the Chamberlain Munich 1938 play ” We saved peace in our time ” . Chamberlain was an idiot , Daladier the french President was not so naive ; When Daladier landed near Paris he was met by a huge crowd of chanting frenchmen ; He had this wry comment ” Ah les Cons ! ” . Macron is a 3rd kind of politician , sly, cunning , one of Obama’s pupils who knows well that Iran suits France’s interests for mercantile reasons .