Israel says it is bracing militarily for possible US-Iran escalation
Israel is preparing for its possible military involvement in
any escalation in the Gulf confrontation between Iran and the United States,
the Israeli foreign minister said on Tuesday.
The unraveling of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under US
diplomatic pressure, Iran’s downing of a US drone and its alleged role in the
holing of oil tankers in the Gulf have driven up tensions and stirred war
worries.
Israel has encouraged the Trump administration to press
ahead with sanctions against its arch-foe, predicting that Tehran will
eventually renegotiate a more limiting nuclear deal.
But Foreign Minister Israel Katz told an international
security forum that Iran might accidentally stumble out of what he termed the
“gray zone” of contained confrontation.
“It should be taken into account that mistaken calculations
by the (Iranian) regime...are liable to bring about a shift from the ‘gray
zone’ to the ‘red zone’ – that is, a military conflagration,” he said in a
speech to the Herzliya Conference.
“We must be prepared for this, and thus the State of Israel
continues to devote itself to building up its military might for the event that
it will have to respond to escalation scenarios.”
Israel has long threatened to take preemptive military
action to deny Iran the means of making nuclear weapons. Tehran says it has no
such designs. One of its senior lawmakers warned on Monday that Israel would be
destroyed within “only half an hour” should the United States attack Iran.
Earlier on Tuesday, Katz predicted that what he described as
the US-led “economic war” on Iran would succeed despite the misgivings of other
world powers.
“Iran has no chance in this war,” he told Israel’s Army
Radio. “Therefore there is an opportunity there, through the tough economic
pressure and the comprehensive sanctions, to prevent war, to achieve the
objectives without war.”