Israeli Defense Minister Reveals: Iran Building Air Base in Lebanon

Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant revealed Monday that Iran is building an air base in Lebanon with the purpose of targeting Israel.

The Times of Israel reported:

Speaking at an annual conference of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism Policy (ICT) at Reichman University in Herzliya, Gallant says the airport is being built in the Qalaat Jabbour mountain region.

“In the pictures, you can see the Iranian flag flying over the runways, from which the ayatollah regime plans to operate against the citizens of Israel,” Gallant says.

“In other words: The land is Lebanese, the control is Iranian, and the target is Israel,” Gallant says.

Iran is heavily involved in Lebanon through its proxy, the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah, which also participates in the Lebanese government.

Israel is thought to be preparing to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the event that the Iranian regime nears production of a nuclear weapon. The U.S. is trying to revive the defunct nuclear deal with Iran, and is informally weighing an unofficial deal under which the regime would stop just short of a producing a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. also pressed Israel to sign a gas deal with Lebanon last year, under which Israel would agree to give up rights to a gas field that was within Israel’s territorial waters, and which Hezbollah had attacked. The thought was that Hezbollah would have less incentive to attack Israel’s gas facilities if it stood at risk of having its own destroyed.

However, it does not seem that Iran is interested in a local rapprochement between Israel and its northern neighbor.

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 new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent 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.