{"id":185880,"date":"2026-07-01T11:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/185880\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:30:07","slug":"defense-minister-katz-claims-oct-7-taught-israel-to-preemptively-strike-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/185880\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Minister Katz claims Oct. 7 taught Israel to preemptively strike threats"},"content":{"rendered":"

The October 7 massacre<\/a> made it clear that Israel must not wait until threats are at its door, Defense Minister Israel Katz stated during the memorial ceremony for the fallen soldiers of the Second Lebanon War.<\/p>\n

As such, he said, Israel had twice struck Iran with “proactive preemptive attacks.”<\/p>\n

“We crushed the nuclear program it was advancing and removed an existential threat from over the citizens of Israel,” Katz claimed.<\/p>\n

“We thwarted its leaders, headed by [former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, who led the plan to destroy Israel. We severely damaged its capabilities<\/a> and set them back by many years – and we dealt severe blows to its proxies throughout the region. And if necessary, we will strike a third time as well.”<\/p>\n

He also stated that the IDF’s current military goal in Lebanon was not to return the situation to its previous state, but to “change the reality and bring security to the residents of the north – as we have done and continue to do in the south.”<\/p>\n

Katz also discussed the recent Israel-Lebanon-US trilateral agreement.<\/p>\n

“Our policy for defending the borders of the State of Israel, as led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> and by me as Defense Minister together with the IDF, is clear,” Katz said. “The IDF will not withdraw and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza – for an unlimited period of time – in order to protect our residents and communities from there against jihadist elements.<\/p>\n

“There will be no Israeli redeployment in southern Lebanon, and there will be no withdrawal whatsoever as long as the Hezbollah terrorist organization has not been disarmed throughout Lebanon and the safety of the residents of the north has not been guaranteed,” Katz insisted. “This is the fundamental condition to which we committed ourselves and which we are upholding.”<\/p>\n

However, this appears to contradict an earlier statement Katz made at a briefing for military reporters on Monday. During the briefing, he said that the pilot program for IDF withdrawals from portions of southern Lebanon while waiting to see whether the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) properly remove Hezbollah will initially focus on the zone between the IDF\u2019s Yellow Line and the Litani River, thereby signifying intent to withdraw, at least in part.<\/p>\n

He also claimed that Iran had failed to force Israeli troops to withdraw from Lebanon<\/a> through its threats and pressure on the United States.<\/p>\n

“An inseparable part of this achievement is also that it constitutes a strategic blow to the Iranian axis,” he stated.<\/p>\n

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The October 7 massacre made it clear that Israel must not wait until threats are at its door,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[423,34,37,99,93,20207,1413],"class_list":["post-185880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-idf","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israel-katz","tag-lebanon","tag-second-lebanon-war","tag-the-october-7-massacre"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116844496558070604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}