Netanyahu sends 'clear message to Iran', says Israel foiled its Syria goals

Following Iran’s purportedly successful test of its first ballistic missile launched from a submarine, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had a “clear message to the Iranian regime that wants to destroy Israel."

"Israel will continue to act as much as necessary to stop the Iranian military buildup in Syria,” he said in what has become his routine defense campaign.

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Speaking to his cabinet, the Israeli premier rebutted the claim by a top Iranian official over the weekend that the Islamic Republic had achieved 90% of its goals in Syria, calling just another lie while offering his own truth that Israel is “blocking them.”

“About a month ago, another Iranian source said they were only ‘advising’ Syria,” the prime minister said cynically. “The world hears a lot of lies from Iran,” he decried.

Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this Wednesday in Paris to discuss just that issue of Iran, which “will be at the top of our agenda,” he told his cabinet.

"It's very important that we continue to prevent Iran from entrenching in Syria," the Israeli premier said of the planned meeting that was postponed from the past week. "This is one of the subjects, the main subject, that I'll be discussing with President Putin."

In an interview with Iranian Tasnim News Agency, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said Israel’s claims about its military campaign against Iran in Syria was “propaganda”.

“One of the main realities in Syria and elsewhere in the region is that the US allies have been defeated by the wills of nations, and have therefore inflicted heavy political, military and financial costs on the US,” he added.

Iran debuted this weekend a submarine that fired a cruise missile during an ongoing annual military drill in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian media reported Sunday.

At the same time, The Revolutionary Guards accused its "enemies" of trying to sabotage Iran’s missiles so that they would "explode mid-air" but said the bid was foiled.

"They tried as best as they could to sabotage a small part which we import so that our missiles would not reach their target and explode mid-air," Fars news agency reported, quoting the Guards' aerospace commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh.

"But they couldn't do a damn thing because we had seen this coming from the start and had reinforced this sector," he added, accusing Iran's "enemies" of sabotage without naming any specific country.

Tehran insists that its missile programme is "purely defensive" and compliant with UN Security Council Resolution 2231 adopted just after the nuclear deal, which calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons."

But the Islamic Republic has developed medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching arch-foe Israel.

Security Coordination in Syria

At the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said he would also discuss with the Russian president enhancing security coordination in Syria “in order to maintain stability and prevent unnecessary friction in the region.”

Netanyahu has not met with Putin since Russia blamed a downing of its military plane in Syria on Israel in September that killed 15 Russian servicemen.

Moscow's report charged that the Israeli pilots -- who were carrying out an air strike on a target in Syria -- knew the Russian aircraft would become the target of what Israel has described as a "rampage" of Syrian anti-aircraft fire.

Israel rejected the report, saying Syria fired wildly without identifying whether its target was Israeli or Russian.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria in the past few years against Iranian and Hezbollah targets.

So far, Iran has responded to the airstrikes twice; in May last year when it fired some twenty rockets at Israel's northern Golan Heights after Syrian media reported Israeli airstrikes on government targets just across the border.

In January, Iran fired a land-to-land missile at Israel’s Golan Heights after Israeli aircrafts had carried out airstrikes on military facilities at Damascus International Airport belonging to Iran.

In both incidents, Israel’s missile defense system shot down the Israeli rockets and missile.