Israeli Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin warns that Israel’s next war would be fought on several fronts and would entail its forces attacking geographically-separate areas and is intended to be of massive scale and lethalit
In a final meeting at the Knesset, outgoing Israeli Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin warned on Tuesday that Israel’s next war would be fought on several fronts and would entail its forces attacking geographically-separate areas and is intended to be of massive scale and lethality.Israel was currently enjoying a period of relative quiet, Yadlin said. “But its enemies were rearming and now posed the greatest threat to the country since the 1970s. A new war would be far deadlier than Israel's last two, relatively short, conflicts in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-9.” “It will be much bigger, much wider in scope, and with many more casualties," added the former Israeli Air Force general,” he said.
“Syria, particularly, posed a greater military obstacle to Israel than at any time in the past three decades,” Yadlin said, having amassed advanced Russian-built antiaircraft missiles that seriously limited the operational freedom of the Israel Air Force. “While Syria had failed to acquire Russian S-300 missiles, seen by Israel as the greatest potential threat to its aircraft, Damascus had improved its defense systems enough to push the military balance with Israel "back to the 1970s",” Yadlin said.
Yadlin also hinted at Israel's involvement in attacking an allegedly Syrian nuclear facility in September 2007. That strike has been widely attributed to Israel, but the government has never officially taken responsibility for the operation. Syria denied the building was a nuclear facility.
"I've seen three defense ministers, two chiefs of staff and two prime ministers come and go, I've been through two wars and I've contended with two nuclear programs of enemy states," Yadlin said, summing up the last years of his career.
"I headed a group of thousands of people working 24 hours a day to collect information that the enemy was not volunteering, information that had to be extracted from difficult places," he added.
Yadlin also warned of a growing “threat” from the Iranian nuclear program. He told the MKs that Iran has sufficient enriched uranium to manufacture a single nuclear device and may soon have enough for making another bomb.
