BICOM

Israel’s head of Military Intelligence, Maj-Gen Tamir Hayman, has warned that Iran is seeking to establish new areas of control outside of Syria.

Hayman told the Intelligence Legacy Center conference in Tel Aviv: “In light of the multi-faceted pressure that we have put [on Iran] — including from the kinetic influence of Israeli actions — there is a slowing of the [Iranian] entrenchment in Syria, but it has not entirely stopped, and Iran is looking for other places to establish a presence, for instance in Iraqi territory”.

Hayman said the economic pressure that Iran is facing from US sanctions has led it to strike out against American and Western assets in the Gulf. He added: “Iran is under growing pressure that is forcing it to take actions connected to oil and to its nuclear project — though for now there are no changes to its policies.”

Speaking about Hezbollah, Hayman said its project to upgrade their basic missiles into precision-guided missile had stalled. “We don’t need Nasrallah to tell us the status of this project. We know it better than he does, and everything that he revealed was already known. To the best of our understanding, their capabilities, their missiles, are still not precise,” he said.

On Sunday, the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper reported that the US had pressured the Lebanese government to end Hezbollah’s precision-guided missile production programme before Israel decided to take action. According to the London-based paper, the Americans presented evidence of the facilities, including images and maps showing their exact locations, to President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Speaking about the southern front, Heyman said that: “Hamas is deterred and has expressed the desire to continue on the track of the [cease-fire] arrangement,” adding that the group’s “growing sovereign obligations are causing tensions with Islamic Jihad”.

Hayman also said that: “Russia is dominant because of friction, disruption and intervention. It partially initiates discord and then approaches relevance with solutions possible because of its presence in the region”.