Israeli Minister of Economy Nir Barkat said Iran is a “legitimate target” for Israeli missile strikes as it continues its three-month war with Hamas.
Barkat boasted of Israel’s military capabilities for an all-out war against Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, arguing that Israel has not been aggressive enough in its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, which Israel believes was facilitated to some degree by Iran.
“Iran is a legitimate target for Israel. They will not get away with it,” Barkat said. “The head of the snake is Tehran.”
“We believe them when they say they want to destroy Israel,” Barkat said. “We are not going to allow another Holocaust.”
Barkat, the favorite to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as head of Likud, the country’s ruling party, stressed that Israel should not allow Iran to “sleep good at night if we don’t sleep good at night.”
“We should very clearly make sure the Iranians understand that they will not get away with using proxies against Israel,” he said.
“My recommendation is to adopt the strategy that President Kennedy used in the Cuban missile crisis,” Israel’s economy minister said, referring to Kennedy’s policy “to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba … an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
Israel argues that Hamas is a proxy for Iran, similar to how Cuba was a proxy state of the USSR, and Barkat’s recommendation is to treat attacks from Hamas as attacks from Iran. Israel’s capabilities used for its bombardment of Gaza, therefore, could be directed at Iran — a nation with unknown nuclear capabilities.
The Israeli military launched a series of strikes on Thursday at a Hezbollah airstrip it claimed was built by Iran for the terrorist group to launch drone attacks from.
Barkat also told the Telegraph that Palestinians from the West Bank will not be allowed to work in Israel again and that the country will import foreigners to take their place.
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As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah escalate, Barkat claimed that opening a second war front in Lebanon to fight the militant group is within Israel’s means. “The threat of Hezbollah must be eliminated,” he said.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Barkat for comment.