From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Netanyahu says Iran has been planning multi-front ground invasion to destroy Israel; ‘Sinwar simply opened fire too early’
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At a meeting earlier today with the parents of observation soldiers murdered by Hamas terrorists at the IDF’s Nahal Oz base on October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Hamas invasion was intended to be just one part of a concrete Iranian plan for a multi-front ground invasion aimed at totally destroying Israel.
Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, said Netanyahu, simply began that effort earlier than Iran wanted. But the Iranian plan, he indicated, is still in place.
In a leaked recording of the meeting broadcast by Channel 12 news, Netanyahu is heard telling the bereaved parents:
“We discovered in the course of the [IDF] operation in Gaza that Sinwar simply opened fire too early — that Iran is planning to put us in a stranglehold of its proxies, to invade us, from Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, Jordan.
“Simultaneous ground invasions and massive missile fire. Hundreds of thousands of missiles rockets, drones,” he elaborates.
“And [attacks] from Iran itself, which it already fired,” he adds, a presumed reference to Iran’s direct attack on Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones in April.
“The plan is not to wipe out Israel as an idea — [but] to destroy the State of Israel, to conquer the State of Israel,” Netanyahu says.
The Times of Israel Community.