Israeli FM: We Will Attack Iran Directly If Iran Attacks from There

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that if Iran attacks Israel from its own territory, then Israel will attack Iran directly, rather than striking at Iran’s terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or Iraqi militias).

Katz posted messages to X, or Twitter, both in Hebrew and in Farsi, and tagging Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran has been threatening to retaliate for an Israeli airstrike on Iranian generals at that country’s consulate April 1 in Damascus, Syria. Iran has been attacking Israel indirectly for months — not just through Hamas’s terror attack on October 7, but also through rocket, missile, and drone attacks on Israel’s southern and northern borders. Iran has largely escaped any direct exposure to the war, however, using its proxies to strike from a safe distance.

Israel has placed its forces on high alert, and recently called up air defense reservists and canceled leave for combat soldiers.

Israel could conceivably use an Iranian attack as a reason to launch an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, which Israel considers an existential threat. Israel has said it is capable of such an attack without help from the U.S.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.