Haaretz
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned on Sunday of Iran’s plan to ‘destroy’ Israel and called to take immediate step to tackle it – including a ‘sharp, quick war’ against Hezbollah.
‘Iran has a laid-out plan for the conventional destruction of Israel,’ Smotrich said at a Jerusalem conference. The Islamic Republic, he said, will have ‘a nuclear envelope which will grant it immunity while it carries out conventional destruction, like wars of the past.’
According to Smotrich, the threat posed by Iran requires Israel to set a goal of bringing down the government in Tehran, with more immediate steps to include ‘total destruction of Hamas’ and thwarting the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
As for Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, Smotrich said ‘there is no escaping a sharp, quick war.’ ‘The war in Lebanon will carry with it a price, and I don’t underestimate it,’ he said. ‘But any price we pay today will be much smaller than what we will be forced to pay in the future, if we don’t act.’