SPOTLIGHT ON ISRAEL

ISRAEL’S PM SAYS IT HAS THE RIGHT TO DETER IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister, told the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in no uncertain terms that Israel has the right to act alone to prevent Iran’s nuclear program from being weaponized.

Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat and is willing to go to war to destroy it. The Trends Journal has been reporting on the clandestine conflict that has been ongoing between the two countries for years. (See “IRAN BLAMES ISRAEL FOR NUCLEAR FACILITY EXPLOSION,” “ISRAEL TO ATTACK IRAN? WASHINGTON GIVES THE GREEN LIGHT TO THE ‘MILITARY OPTION’” and “ISRAEL HOLDS MILITARY EXERCISE TO STRIKE IRAN.”)

Some analysts believe Iran already has the material needed to manufacture a nuclear weapon while others say the country may have made strides since the U.S. withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but is short of weapons-grade uranium.

“Iran has never been closer to the verge of nuclear weapons,” Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group and former senior political affairs officer at the UN, told ABC News. “And restoring the JCPOA is going to become more and more difficult as time passes.”

Bennett met with Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, while the U.S.’s diplomatic effort to rejoin the pact sputters. Bennett said that “while Israel prefers diplomacy to deny Iran the possibility of developing nuclear weapons, it reserves the right to self-defense and action against Iran to block its nuclear program.”

AntiWar.org reported that Israel is known to conduct assassinations and other covert attacks on scientists and nuclear facilities inside Iran but has “lately been threatening a more overt operation, although it is not clear if Israeli bombers are capable of such an attack.”

Israel’s military has taken steps to deliver a decisive blow to the project.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel modified its U.S.-made F-35 stealth fighters to be capable of flying from Israel to Iran without mid-air refueling. 

The country also “integrated a new one-ton bomb into the arsenal of weapons used by the F-35s that can be carried inside the plane’s internal weapons compartment without jeopardizing its stealth radar signature.”

Reports said Israel owns 33 Lockheed Martin F-35s. The Israeli Air Force conducted a massive war drill over the Mediterranean Sea that included four large-scale military drills simulating attacks against Iran.

A day after Bennett made his comment about the Iranian nuclear program, Iran announced that it had turned off two monitoring cameras used by the IAEA at its nuclear sites.

TRENDPOST: Bennett has indicated that a confrontation with Iran is almost inevitable. He told the Knesset last week that Israel’s strategy has changed when it comes to Iran and that the IDF is now “acting against the head… and not just its arms, as we had in recent years.”

The comment came after he recently marked Jerusalem Day with a special cabinet meeting and discussed the threat of Iran. Bennett said Tehran’s days of terror-sponsoring “immunity” has come to an end. 

“Whoever funds terrorists, whoever arms terrorists, whoever sends out terrorists, will pay the full price,” he said.

Of course, the U.S. just can’t resist getting involved. Congress introduced legislation on Thursday that calls for providing new air defenses for Israel and its friendly neighbors in the Middle East.

The theory is that these defense systems will help protect Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, and Jordan, “from cruise and ballistic missiles, manned and unmanned aerial systems, and rocket attacks from Iran, and for other purposes,” The Wall Street Journal reported. 

TREND FORECAST: Yielding 291 billion cubic meters of gas last year, Iran is the world’s largest gas producer after Russia’s Gazprom.  

Should war break out in the Middle East, oil prices will spike to above $150 per barrel which will spike inflation and crash equity markets and global economies. It will also be a spark that will further the flames of WWIII.

UN REPORT FINDS ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION, DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PALESTINIANS THE MAIN ‘CAUSE OF VIOLENCE’

The UN Human Rights Council issued a report on Tuesday that blamed Israel for “all underlying root causes” of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict due to its continued occupation of Palestinian land.

The report, which was 18 pages, did not end at the occupation of Palestinian territory in places like East Jerusalem. The report said that the discrimination against Palestinians must also end. 

The report used an Israeli law as an example of discrimination. The law states that Palestinians who marry Israelis are still refused naturalization in the country.

The findings were part of the first report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which was established last May by the UN Human Rights Council.

“The findings and recommendations relevant to the underlying root causes were overwhelmingly directed towards Israel, which we have taken as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one State occupying the other,” Navanethem Pillay, the commission’s chair, said in a statement.

The Trends Journal has reported extensively on the recent and historic tension in the area that often leads to violent clashes. (See “SPECIAL: SPOTLIGHT ON ISRAEL,” “SHOOTING BREAKS OUT IN ISRAEL: REVENGE OR TERRORISM?” “APARTHEID STATE OF ISRAEL CLAMPING DOWN ON PALESTINIANS” and “AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: ISRAEL’S TREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS AMOUNTS TO APARTHEID.”)  

We have reported that both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Israel have stated that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians meets the internationally accepted definition of apartheid.

The Jerusalem Post was critical of the report and blamed the UN’s Human Rights Council for showing its bias against Israel. For dramatic effect, the editorial showed an image of Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador, tearing up the report at the UN’s General Assembly.

The paper said the agency is “blinded by a hatred for Israel, and instead of standing up for the values upon which this international institution was founded, it prefers to give credence to terrorists and forces that actively work to undermine democracy and freedom.”

Ned Price, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said the report “does nothing to alleviate our concerns.”

“While no country is above scrutiny, the existence of this COI in its current form is a continuation of a longstanding pattern of unfairly singling out Israel. We re-engaged with and later re-joined the HRC in part to be in a better position to address its flaws, including this one, and we will continue to seek reforms,” he said.

The inquiry was designed after the 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis. The conflict resulted in the deaths of at least 145 people in Gaza and 12 in Israel. There was also an outbreak of mob attacks in Arab-Jewish cities.

The report said Israel has shown no interest in ending its occupation. The land in question was taken by Israel in a 1967 war and later annexed in a move that the Trends Journal has reported was never recognized by the international community.

(photo credit: Israel Mission to the UN)

TRENDPOST: While the Western media continually chastises Russia for its war against Ukraine and its intent to occupy Ukraine, those who note Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land are denounced as being “anti-Semites.”

In the 1967 six-day war, Israel invaded and seized Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights, expelling some 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, while gaining stolen territory that was three and a half times its original size.

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. They violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 that states, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

ACRIMONY BETWEEN ISRAEL, IRAN HITS NEW HEIGHTS; KHAMENEI CALLS ‘ZIONIST CAPITALISTS’ PLAGUE WHILE BENNETT VISITS UAE

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blamed “Zionist capitalists” for being a “plague” for the world in a fiery speech last week as tensions between the two countries near all-time highs. 

“Today, Zionism is an obvious plague for the world of Islam. The Zionists have always been a plague, even before establishing the fraudulent Zionist regime. Even then, Zionist capitalists were a plague for the world. Now There are plague specially for the world of Islam.”

Khamenei made the speech a day before Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett visited the United Arab Emirates in what The New York Times called an example of their “strengthening alliance.”

Bennett met with Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president, and called it a successful meeting that included a conversation about growth and “security of both our peoples.” 

The Trends Journal has long reported on alliances in the region. The UAE has joined Saudi Arabia in its effort in Yemen and has been attacked by Houthis in Yemen who are backed by Iran. (See “U.S. FIGHTING YEMEN WAR,” “BOMBS AWAY: OIL DEPOTS IN SAUDI ARABIA HIT BY HOUTHIS” and “HOUTHIS BLAME U.S. FOR UNDERMINING FRAGILE TRUCE.”)

Khamenei called out Arab and non-Arab states “that shook hands, kissed and held meetings with the Zionists” and said they will not benefit from these kinds of interactions and that it will  “only be to their loss.”

“The Zionist regime exploits these states. They don’t realize it, but we hope they realize it before it’s too late,” he said.

Israel has vowed that it will not sit by while Iran weaponizes uranium, and has been known to carry out clandestine assassinations and acts of sabotage to prevent these programs from succeeding. Iran on Monday blamed Israel for poisoning two top graduates who live 400 miles from each other. 

Ayoub Entezari was an aeronautical engineer and Kamran Aghamolaei was a geologist, The Times reported. Entezari developed symptoms of food poisoning after attending a dinner party, the paper said. The host of the party is now missing, according to the report. 

UPDATE: Israel reportedly told Syria that it will begin to target Syrian President Basher Assad’s palaces if his country continues to cooperate militarily with Iran. 

The Jerusalem Post said it could not independently confirm the Elaph report. The Arabic news site said it learned from a “senior source” that Israel sent a message to Assad “warning him against continuing to cover up Iran’s operations in his country and the transfer of quality weapons to Syria, and informed him that one of his palaces would be a target in the next raid carried out by Israeli fighters in Syria.”

The move was seen as a dramatic escalation in the ongoing conflict in the region. Israel did not comment on the report, but The Post reported that Tel Aviv has used the news website in the past to send messages to the Arab world.

TRENDPOST: While the media continues to report on Israel’s determination to stop Iran from going nuclear, rarely is it noted that according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Israel possesses at minimum some 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads and has produced enough plutonium for 100-200 weapons. 

Thus, it is OK for Israel and other nations to have nuclear weapons but not Iran… or, for that matter, North Korea. Only nations sanctified by a higher political order are permitted to have nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. And, as evidenced with Iraq, whether they possess them or not, the very thought of it is enough to invade and destroy an “enemy” nation.

ISRAEL: BOMBS AWAY OVER SYRIA, STRIKE HITS DAMASCUS AIRPORT, HALTING FLIGHTS IN BELEAGURED COUNTRY 

Syria blamed Israel for targeting the Damascus International Airport in an airstrike early Friday that damaged several areas of the facility, including runways that resulted in the cancellation of flights for at least two days. 

“Landing and departing flights were suspended today till further notification as a result of the Israeli aggression, since it caused heavy damages to the airstrips in several localities and to the navigation lights in addition to the damages [that] occurred in the airport lobby,” SANA, Syria’s state news outlet, reported Friday, citing the country’s transport ministry.

State media reported that the airport absorbed missiles fired from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Al Jazeera reported. The barrage started at about 4:20 a.m. local time.

Syria’s transport ministry announced that several agencies are working to repair the “sizable” damage inflicted at the facility. 

Al Jazeera reported that Russia condemned “the provocative Israeli attack against essential civilian infrastructure.” Russia’s foreign ministry called the attack “an absolutely unacceptable violation of international norms,” the report said.

Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iranian foreign minister, condemned the attack as a “clear violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity… (and) contrary to international law and human principles,” in a call with Faisal Mekdad, his Syrian counterpart, Reuters reported.

Israel looks at the airport as problematic because it believes large weapons are smuggled there on Iranian cargo airlines that frequent the airport. The Times of Israel reported that the IDF accused Iran and Hezbollah of “endangering civilians” by smuggling “advanced weaponry” via civilian flights into the country. 

TREND FORECAST: The Trends Journal has reported on Israel’s continuing bombing Syria. relationship between Israel and Syria. (See “ISRAEL CONDUCTS SERIES OF DEADLY AIRSTRIKES IN SYRIA,” “TERROR STRIKES SYRIA: ALL OUT WAR COMING?” ,“ISRAEL KEEPS BOMBING SYRIA,” “ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES KILL 3 SOLDIERS IN SYRIA.” “ISRAEL KEEPS LAUNCHING MISSILES INTO SYRIA. WILL WAR ESCALATE?” and “U.S. SOLDIERS INJURED AFTER BASE SHELLED IN SYRIA, WHY ARE THESE TROOPS STILL THERE?”)

As we have forecast, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett taking over for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, considering who he is and what he stands for, we forecast it will be a continued escalation against Syria, Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran.

And should war escalate in the Middle East, so too will oil prices which in turn will dramatically increase inflation pressures around the globe and push nations deeper into recession that they are already suffering from as a result of the Ukraine War.