Iran has begun deploying missiles in Yemen in order to strike Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that Iran is seeking to develop and deploy guided weapons that can strike any point in the Middle East, including placing them in Yemen to strike Israel.
Netanyahu made the remarks as he met with visiting US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, where the two men gave a joint press conference before their talk.
In September a combined cruise missile and drone attack hit Saudi Arabian oil installations.
The attacks, claimed by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, damaged a third of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure and sent global energy prices soaring. Washington, Riyadh, Berlin, London and Paris blamed Iran for the attacks, which Tehran has denied.
It was not clear what strategic advantage Iran would gain from targeting Israel from Yemen, which is nearly twice as far from the Jewish state as its own soil.
Mnuchin at the meeting pledged to increase economic sanctions against Iran, saying Washington’s “maximum pressure campaign” is halting Iranian aggression.
He said American sanctions aim to force Iran to stop “their bad activities and exporting terrorism, looking to create nuclear capabilities, and missiles.”
Washington reimposed sanctions on Iran after last year pulling out of a 2015 seven-nation nuclear deal which offered Iran relief from sanctions in exhange for curbs to its nuclear program. US President Donald Trump said he was withdrawing from the deal because it did not go far enough in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and did not properly address Iran’s missile development program.
Iran denies it wants to produce nuclear weapons and has also begun to reduce its commitments to the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. As the pact unravels, tensions in the Middle East have risen with unclaimed attacks on oil tankers on the Gulf.
Last week Israel’s Army Radio reported that Israel was readying for a direct cruise missile or drone strike by Tehran in response to recent attacks on Iranian regional proxies which have been attributed to the Jewish state.
The report cited anonymous Israeli sources who said the IDF was already on high alert for the possibility.
The high-level security cabinet will convene for a special meeting on Tuesday against a backdrop of tensions with the Islamic Republic, the report said.
