White House condemns Iran rocket attacks against Israel

One TV station, Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen, said at least 50 missiles were fired from Syria at Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. Gen. Amir Eshel, the departing commander of the Israeli Air Force, said Israel had launched almost 100 strikes on convoys since 2012.

Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said later that damage to Israeli positions was “limited”.

It added that it “will not allow the Iranian threat to establish itself in Syria”. Four of them were on a trajectory to hit IDF positions.

The Iranian rockets did not cause any casualties – with Israel boasting that their Iron Dome rocket defence system managed to intercept some of the raids. “We made the choice to build peace in the Middle East”.

Iranian media described the Israeli attack as “unprecedented”, but there was no official Iranian comment on Israel’s claims.

A senior pro-regime military source in Syria confirmed the salvo of rockets, but said that Israel had fired first. For Israel, though, she said it’s “really hard to pick a dog in this fight”. “I hope that at this stage we have succeeded in finishing the new chapter in our stand against Iranian extremism”. And if this is the case, that will be the end of this very short and aggressive conflict.

Iran’s feared Savak secret police is created in 1957 with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency and eventually Israel’s Mossad.

The escalation in fighting between Syria and Iran follows a ratcheting up of tensions after President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, a move that Israel supported. “It all comes from Iran, but it’s a totally different front”, Nuriel said. Israel fired back on Thursday, hitting dozens of Iranian targets in Syria. Hezbollah has at its disposal more than 130,000 missiles that can now reach every part of Israel.

The Middle East was becoming very unsafe, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, adding that there was no Plan B in response to Trump’s move and that France wanted to keep the accord alive even without Washington on board.

“They basically are at war”.

Tel Aviv forces were expecting Iranian retaliation after Israeli Defense Forces carried out a strike last month that killed seven Iranian troops at an airbase. “There’s talk of war nearly daily here in Israeli newspapers”, Mitchell said. President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that the US was withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran has triggered uncertainty and threatened to spark more unrest in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia, a long-time foe of Israel, is the main religious and regional rival of Iran, with the two powerhouses also on opposing sides of conflicts in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.

“There’s an underground, unspoken relationship between the Jewish state and these Sunni nations”.

On relations with the USA and Russia: “It shouldn’t be taken for granted that we have the ability to talk and consult with the two biggest powers at a moment’s notice”. I think that matters were presented in a direct and forthright manner, and this is important.