An attack on Iran will make the world understand Israel's power, says Defense Minister | Israel

Planned airstrikes on Iran will make the world understand Israel's military might, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.

The Middle East has been bracing for more than three weeks for a looming Israeli response to Iran's Oct. 1 rocket attack, which itself was in retaliation for Israel's killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Gallant visited aircrews at Hatzerim air base on Wednesday and made it clear that Israel still intended to strike back. “After we attack in Iran, they will understand in Israel and elsewhere what your preparations entailed,” Gallant told the crews in a video distributed by his office.

On X, Gallant added more about his interactions with Air Force personnel. “In my conversation with them, I emphasized – after we attack Iran, everyone will understand your power, the process of preparation and training – any enemy who tries to harm the State of Israel will pay a high price,” said the minister.

The size of Israel's target list has been the subject of lengthy discussions between Israeli leaders and the Biden administration, which has urged them not to attack oil industry infrastructure or Iran's nuclear program. Washington fears a spiral of escalation, particularly in the last two weeks before the US presidential election.

Israel is already fighting on several fronts. In Lebanon, Hezbollah confirmed Wednesday the death of Hashem Safieddine, expected to succeed Nasrallah. Israel claimed that Safieddine was killed in an airstrike earlier this month along with Ali Hussein Hazima, the head of Hezbollah's intelligence unit.

In the statement, Hezbollah said Safieddine had spent most of his life serving the movement and that he had “competently led” the Executive Council – Hezbollah's highest policy-making body. The group vowed to continue “this path of resistance and jihad.”

The death of Safieddine, the highest-ranking Hezbollah official killed since Nasrallah's assassination, further questions the group's leadership. The group's current de facto public face is Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary general, but he has not yet been named permanent leader. Although most of its senior military and political leaders have been killed by Israel in the past three months, Hezbollah said the organization remains capable of fighting Israel.

Israel carried out airstrikes on Wednesday on Tyre, one of the largest cities in southern Lebanon that has become a refuge for thousands of families displaced by fighting further south over the past year. Videos showed large clouds of smoke rising between residential buildings in the center of the city.

“We are sitting here in fear. The blows are close to us, the sounds are right next to us. We are horrified,” said Rita Darwish, a woman who was expelled from Dhayra, a border village, to Tire a year earlier. She added that she would flee Tire “as quickly as possible” once the bombing stopped.

The attacks on the center of Tyra, a port city that is a UNESCO world heritage site, were part of Israel's widening military campaign in Lebanon, which escalated over the last week. Parts of greater Beirut that had not previously been hit, as well as Tire and Nabatea, another large city in the south, were now included in Israel's attacks.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it had carried out 39 operations against Israel, including shooting down two drones, attacking six tanks and attacking 19 groups of Israeli soldiers. Fighting continued on Wednesday, with Hezbollah bombing Israeli soldiers in the southern Lebanon towns of Odaisseh and Rab Thalatheen.

The militant Islamist group's daily attacks have risen significantly in recent weeks and it said it had entered an “escalation phase” of the war against Israel. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's holiday residence in the coastal city of Caesarea on Saturday. Netanyahu was not present at the time of the attack.

On Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces accused six Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza of “military affiliation” with Hamas, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) responded skeptically, saying that “Israel has repeatedly made similar unsubstantiated claims without providing credible evidence.”

“After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document that contained contradictory information and showed that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military rank in 2007 – when he was ten years old,” the NGO said in a statement to X.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the IDF continued to arrest Palestinian men to end resistance in the area, more than a year after the start of the Gaza war. An IDF statement said at least 150 men had surrendered and been arrested. The United Nations estimates that around 60,000 people have fled northern Gaza to the southern end of the coastal strip in the last two weeks amid Israeli evacuation orders, military strikes and severe shortages of food, water and medicine.