JERUSALEM: Israel is working on a new missile system capable of hitting targets anywhere in the Middle East, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday.
State-owned arms manufacturer Israel Military Industries (IMI) would deliver “within a few years” an advanced integrated system “allowing precise hits by remote launching,” he said in a statement.
Lieberman added that the contract with IMI was budgeted at “hundreds of millions of shekels.”
The Israeli shekel is currently trading at 3.63 to the US dollar.
“The project for setting up a precision rocket and missile system is underway,” Lieberman said in the statement.
“Part of it is already in production and part is in the final phases of research and development.
“We are acquiring and developing precision fire systems that will allow... the Israel Defense Forces to cover within a few years every point in the region.”
Israel is considered the leading military power in the Middle East and believed to be the only country in the region to possess nuclear weapons.
Foreign military experts say it has several batteries of its Jericho ballistic missile, capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
IMI said in 2004 that it had produced a cruise missile, the Delilah, with a range of 250 kilometers (150 miles).
It also has an array of anti-missile rocket systems but Monday’s statement quoted IMI chairman Yitzhak Aharonovitch saying that the new armament would “reflect the company’s technological capabilities, which specialize in the ability to fire accurately, to strike at a variety of ground targets.”
Israel faces a variety of threats and considers Iran its most dangerous foe in the region.
It is regularly targeted by rockets and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip, ruled by Islamist movement Hamas.
Another of its enemies is the Iran-backed Shiite group Hezbollah based in neighboring Lebanon.
Israel also shares a border with Syria, where Iran and Hezbollah are fighting alongside President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war.
Netanyahu has pledged to prevent Tehran from further entrenching itself in Syria and a series of recent strikes that have killed Iranians there have been attributed to Israel.
Lieberman did not reveal details of the planned new system or its potential targets and his office did not respond to AFP requests for information.
Israel developing missiles to hit anywhere in Mideast: minister
Israel developing missiles to hit anywhere in Mideast: minister
- State-owned arms manufacturer would deliver “within a few years” an advanced integrated system “allowing precise hits by remote launching,” Lieberman said
Hezbollah accepts resignation of senior security official Wafiq Safa amid restructuring
- Safa survived an Israeli assassination attempt in October 2024
- A source said “the resignation and its acceptance were part of an internal restructuring move“
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah accepted the resignation of senior security official Wafiq Safa on Friday, the first time an official of his rank has stepped down, sources familiar with the group’s thinking told Reuters.
Safa, who heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, survived an Israeli assassination attempt in October 2024.
A source said “the resignation and its acceptance were part of an internal restructuring move” following losses Hezbollah sustained in last year’s war with Israel, adding that southern commander Hussein Abdullah was appointed to replace Safa.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 to end more than a year of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, which had culminated in Israeli strikes that severely weakened the Iran-backed militant group. Since then, the sides have traded accusations of ceasefire violations.
Lebanon has faced growing pressure from the US and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear that Israel could dramatically escalate strikes across the battered country to push Lebanon’s leaders to confiscate Hezbollah’s arsenal more quickly.
Hezbollah has fought numerous conflicts with Israel since it was founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982. It kept its arms after the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, using them against Israeli troops who occupied the south until 2000.
Safa, whom Middle East media reports said was born in 1960, oversaw negotiations that led to a 2008 deal in which Hezbollah exchanged the bodies of Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 for Lebanese prisoners in Israel. The 2006 incident triggered a 34-day war with Israel.
