Iran and its proxies will stage all-out attack in two years, Liberman says

“The State of Israel must understand that Iran is planning an all-out attack within two years, of the entire axis of evil against the State of Israel,” Avigdor Liberman, chairman of the Yisrael Beitenu Party, warned on Monday.

The “coordinated and synchronized attack” would emanate from Iran and its proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Shi’ite militias operating in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen, the former defense minister told 103FM radio hosts Ben Caspit and Aryeh Eldad.

“I don’t get the impression that the decision-makers at both the political and military levels understand this, have internalized it, and are preparing for it,” Liberman said.

“Everything we see right now from Hezbollah is a promo. They are trying to learn our defense system, the reactions of our anti-aircraft, the nature and speed of the reaction, this is a learning process,” he said.

Liberman based his prediction on the time it would take Iran to complete the military aspects of its nuclear program.

“They have already passed from the stage of enriching the uranium to the deployment of the military part. The military part will take them two years,” he said.

Iran wants to have an umbrella of nuclear weapons, not just the possession of enriched uranium, he explained.

“The erosion of Israeli deterrence brought them to the conclusion that they can sprint [towards nuclear weapons],” Liberman said, referring to Israel’s failures on Oct. 7 and its muted counter-attack to the Iranian aerial assault on the Jewish state in April.

Liberman sharply criticized Israel’s policy of containment where it attempts to manage aggression rather than decisively defeating it.

“The fact that we don’t know how to defeat a terrorist organization like Hamas for eight months requires examination,” he said.

“It can’t be that for six days a small country with a much smaller population, with equipment and weapons not as advanced as compared to what we have today, fought on three fronts against three countries,” he said, referring to the 1967 Six-Day War.

“Now we do not know how to fight against two terrorist organizations at the same time,” he said.