JERUSALEM: An Israeli cabinet minister warned on Sunday of possible direct or proxy Iranian attacks on Israel should the stand-off between Tehran and Washington escalate.
The United States has increased economic and military pressure on Iran, with President Donald Trump on Thursday urging its leaders to talk to him about giving up their nuclear program and saying he could not rule out an armed confrontation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which supports Trump’s hard tack against its arch-foe, has largely been reticent about the spiralling tensions.
Parting with the silence, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that, in the Gulf, “things are heating up.”
“If there’s some sort of conflagration between Iran and the United States, between Iran and its neighbors, I’m not ruling out that they will activate Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad from Gaza, or even that they will try to fire missiles from Iran at the State of Israel,” Steinitz, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Israel’s Ynet TV.
Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are Iranian-sponsored guerrilla groups on Israel’s borders, the former active in Syria as well as Lebanon and the latter in the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military declined to comment when asked if it was making any preparations for possible threats linked to the Iran-US standoff.
Israel has traded blows with Iranian forces in Syria, as well as with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants. But it has not fought an open war with Iran, a country on the other side of the Middle East.
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Iran may attack Israel if US standoff escalates: Israeli minister
Iran may attack Israel if US standoff escalates: Israeli minister
- The US has increased economic and military pressure on Iran
- Donald Trump urged its leaders to talk to him about giving up Iran's nuclear program
Turkiye’s Kurdish party says Syria deal leaves Ankara ‘no excuses’ on peace process
ANKARA: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party said on Monday that the Turkish government had no more “excuses” to delay a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) now that a landmark integration deal was achieved in neighboring Syria.
On Sunday in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to come under the control of authorities in Damascus — a move that Ankara had long sought as integral to its own peace effort with the PKK. “For more than a year, the government has presented the SDF’s integration with Damascus as the biggest obstacle to the process,” Tuncer Bakirhan, co-leader of the DEM Party, told Reuters, in some of the party’s first public comments on the deal in Syria.
“The government will no longer have any excuses left. Now it is the government’s turn to take concrete steps.” Bakirhan cautioned President Tayyip Erdogan’s government against concluding that the rolling back Kurdish territorial gains in Syria negated the need for a peace process in Turkiye. “If the government calculates that ‘we have weakened the Kurds in Syria, so there is no longer a need for a process in Turkiye,’ it would be making a historic mistake,” he said in the interview.
Turkish officials said earlier on Monday that the Syrian integration deal, if implemented, could
advance the more than year-long process with the PKK, which is based in northern Iraq. Erdogan urged
swift integration of Kurdish fighters into Syria’s armed forces. Turkiye, the strongest foreign backer of Damascus, has since 2016 repeatedly sent forces into northern Syria to curb the gains of the SDF — which after the 2011–2024 civil war had controlled more than a quarter of Syria while fighting Islamic State with strong US backing.
The United States has built close ties with Damascus over the last year and was closely involved in mediation between it and the SDF toward the deal.
Bakirhan said progress required recognition of Kurdish rights on both sides of the border.
“What needs to be done is clear: Kurdish rights must be recognized in both Turkiye and Syria, democratic regimes must be established, and freedoms must be guaranteed,” he said.
On Sunday in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to come under the control of authorities in Damascus — a move that Ankara had long sought as integral to its own peace effort with the PKK. “For more than a year, the government has presented the SDF’s integration with Damascus as the biggest obstacle to the process,” Tuncer Bakirhan, co-leader of the DEM Party, told Reuters, in some of the party’s first public comments on the deal in Syria.
“The government will no longer have any excuses left. Now it is the government’s turn to take concrete steps.” Bakirhan cautioned President Tayyip Erdogan’s government against concluding that the rolling back Kurdish territorial gains in Syria negated the need for a peace process in Turkiye. “If the government calculates that ‘we have weakened the Kurds in Syria, so there is no longer a need for a process in Turkiye,’ it would be making a historic mistake,” he said in the interview.
Turkish officials said earlier on Monday that the Syrian integration deal, if implemented, could
advance the more than year-long process with the PKK, which is based in northern Iraq. Erdogan urged
swift integration of Kurdish fighters into Syria’s armed forces. Turkiye, the strongest foreign backer of Damascus, has since 2016 repeatedly sent forces into northern Syria to curb the gains of the SDF — which after the 2011–2024 civil war had controlled more than a quarter of Syria while fighting Islamic State with strong US backing.
The United States has built close ties with Damascus over the last year and was closely involved in mediation between it and the SDF toward the deal.
Bakirhan said progress required recognition of Kurdish rights on both sides of the border.
“What needs to be done is clear: Kurdish rights must be recognized in both Turkiye and Syria, democratic regimes must be established, and freedoms must be guaranteed,” he said.
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