Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday said Iran is likely to retaliate against Israel for a recent missile strike that hit Tehran\u2019s consulate in Damascus, Syria.<\/p>\n
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, which killed senior Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi. Reuters cited a Lebanese security source as the first to identify Israel as the responsible party, to which an Israeli military spokesperson responded, \u2018We do not comment on reports in the foreign media.\u2019<\/p>\n
In an interview on CNN, Esper predicted Iran will take action against Israel, but on a limited scale to avoid wide-scale war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u2018They are going to act,\u2019 Esper said Friday. \u2018They\u2019re going to feel the need, to uphold their dignity, to maintain credibility with their proxies, throughout the region, and to really meet the demands of hardliners, within the theocracy that wants to see something done.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018But on the other hand, they\u2019re not going to want to make this a wider war,\u2019 he continued. \u2018They don\u2019t want to escalate. They know that a major conflict with Israel, let alone Israel and the United States would be disastrous for Iran. So, I suspect that they will limit the attack to Israel, Israeli targets.\u20193<\/p>\n
Iran has said it reserves the right \u2018to take a decisive response\u2019 after the purported Israeli strike, which killed six other Iranian military advisers in addition to Zahedi.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A senior Biden administration official told Fox News Digital that President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the threat from Iran on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Our teams have been in regular and continuous contact since then. The United States fully supports the defense of Israel against threats from Iran,\u2019 the official said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two U.S. defense officials said U.S. force posture has not changed in the Middle East since before Israel\u2019s air strike in Damascus. The U.S. is monitoring the situation given the increased rhetoric from Iran, but has not made any changes to prepare for a significant attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Nothing has changed from a force projection standpoint,\u2019 one official said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though Israel has not taken credit for the strike on Iran\u2019s consulate, the IDF has made several operational changes, such as canceling leave for any IDF personnel and calling up additional reservists to bolster the force\u2019s air defense systems on Israel\u2019s northern border, The Telegraph reported.<\/p>\n
Israel has also suffered widespread GPS disruptions on applications, with some users shown to be in Lebanon\u2019s capital Beirut, which Israeli outlet Haaretz reported as deliberate attempts to confuse Israeli drone threats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari reiterated the multifaceted conflict Israel is fighting, saying, \u2018We are in a multi-front war. We are looking not only at Hamas but all our enemies. We look at all fronts and all threats in order to be ready for any scenario.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Liz Friden, Fox News Digital\u2019s Peter Aitken and Reuters contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday said Iran is likely to retaliate against Israel for a recent missile strike that hit Tehran\u2019s consulate in Damascus, Syria. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, which killed senior Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi. Reuters cited a Lebanese security source as the first <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}