Israel updating plans to strike Iranian nuclear sites – Defense Minister

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Israeli military is updating plans to strike Iranian nuclear sites and is prepared to act independently, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has said, according to Fox News.

Israel has identified numerous targets inside Iran that would hurt its ability to develop a nuclear bomb.

"If the world stops them before, it's very much good. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves," Gantz said in his first sit-down interview with an American outlet.

Amid increasing regional tension, intelligence assessments state that Iran will likely target Israel using proxies in Syria and Lebanon during 2021.

Gantz said the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has hundreds of thousands of rockets. A classified map of targets shared with Fox News shows many of the rockets among civilian areas along the Israeli border.

"This is a target map. Each one of them has been checked legally, operationally, intelligence-wise and we are ready to fight," Gantz added.