IDF places limitations on soldiers’ travel abroad amid fears of Iranian attack
Air Force bars career officers, NCOs from traveling, as army said to order any servicemembers in Georgia, Azerbaijan to leave
The Israel Defense Forces is placing limitations on servicemembers’ travel abroad amid concerns that Iran could try to get to them as part of its retaliation for the assassination of the Hamas terror group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
On Monday, Israeli Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar barred servicemembers from traveling abroad, the military said.
The directive applied to career officers and NCOs, not conscripts.
At the same time, Kan news reported that the military in general had issued a directive on Sunday ordering all off-duty soldiers who are currently in Georgia or Azerbaijan to return to Israel immediately. Both countries are near Iran, though only Azerbaijan shares a direct border with the Islamic Republic.
Servicemembers could presumably be in either country on vacation or to visit family.
The military did not directly comment on the latter report, saying only that it is “conducting threat assessments all the time, and updating accordingly the list of countries permitted for servicemembers to enter.”
The IDF said that the move follows a new assessment of the situation, but there were no changes to guidelines for civilians.
Iran and its proxy Hezbollah have repeatedly threatened to attack Israel in the wake of two high-profile assassinations at the end of last month.
On July 30, several days after a rocket attack by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon killed 12 children and teens in the Golan Heights, Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a Beirut airstrike. Hours later, Haniyeh was killed in a blast in Tehran for which Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility. Iran and Hamas have blamed the Jewish state.
Israel has been bracing for the promised responses, and the United States has increased its military presence in the region as Western diplomats work to deescalate the situation. Numerous international airlines have stopped flights to Israel and to Lebanon in anticipation of a flareup.
Several reports in Hebrew media outlets Sunday evening indicated that Israel was expecting a major Iranian attack to be launched within days, though the military sought to downplay this by stressing that instructions to civilians were unchanged.
On Friday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that it was “also considering the possibility of hitting targets outside Israel,” saying it would make Iran’s unprecedented missile-and-drone attack in April “be remembered as something small,” according to Kan.
There have been reports that new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is fighting hardliners to tone down the scale of Tehran’s promised response to the Haniyeh killing, instead pushing to hit alleged Mossad spy bases hidden around the region.
“He has suggested targeting somewhere related to Israel in the Republic of Azerbaijan or [Iraqi] Kurdistan and to let these countries know before that and get done with the whole drama,” an aide told the paper.
Iran has previously attacked such alleged bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to the report.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
