Israel is preparing to retaliate against Iran when ‘the time is right’

Beirut: Israel will retaliate against Iran for the missile attack launched by Tehran when the time is right, a military spokesman said on Saturday, adding that two air bases struck in the attack remained fully operational and no aircraft were damaged.

“The way in which we respond to this disgraceful attack will be in the manner, at the location and the timing which we decide, according to the political leadership’s instructions,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a broadcast statement.

Earlier on Saturday, it was revealed Hezbollah has “lost contact” with the potential successor to slain leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike on their intelligence headquarters.

The loss of Nasrallah’s rumoured heir, Hashem Safieddine, would be yet another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region, which have sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.

In Israel’s campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, it carried out a large strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Thursday that targeted Safieddine in an underground bunker, according to three Israeli officials.

Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine.Credit: Anadolu via Getty Images

Ongoing Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburb – known as Dahiyeh – since Friday have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack, the Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said.

Hezbollah has made no comment on Safieddine since the attack.

Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.

At least 24 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes also targeted a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday morning, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.

The strikes on the mosque and the school happened near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip

In its own statement, the Israeli military said it conducted “precise strikes on Hamas terrorists” who were operating within command and control centres embedded in Ibn Rushd School and the Shuhada al-Aqsa Mosque in the area of Deir al Balah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit out at France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday for saying that shipments of arms to Israel used in the conflict in Gaza should be stopped as part of a broader effort to find a political solution.

“Shame on them,” Netanyahu said of Macron and other Western leaders who have called for what he described as an arms embargo on Israel.

“Israel will win with or without their support,” he said in a pre-recorded video released by his office.

Macron earlier told France Inter radio that the priority was “to get back to a political solution (and) that arms used to fight in Gaza are halted. France doesn’t ship any.”

“Our priority now is to avoid escalation. The Lebanese people must not in turn be sacrificed, Lebanon cannot become another Gaza,” he added.

Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hezbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.

A woman carries a child through the crater from an Israeli air strike as she makes her way across the border with her children.Credit: Getty Images

Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hezbollah since October 8 last year.

The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, including rescue workers, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people - almost a quarter of the population - to flee their homes.

The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group also said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli.

Israel has meanwhile staged nightly bombardment of Dahiyeh, once a bustling and densely populated area of Beirut and a stronghold for Hezbollah.

On Saturday, smoke billowed over Dahiyeh, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble sending residents fleeing to other parts of Beirut or of Lebanon.

The violence comes as the anniversary approaches of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

Reuters

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