Israel accuses Iran’s Quds Force of smuggling funds to Hezbollah via Beirut airport

Israel was considering significant strikes on Iran in 2025 and viewed President Donald Trump as more amenable to their plans, the paper cited officials familiar with the assessment as saying.

US intelligence cited the risk of further conflict in the Middle East and characterized Iran as weakened following an Oct. 26 Israeli attack on Iran, adding that Israel views the window for denying Iran a nuclear weapons capability as fast closing.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon but Israel says is Mideast nemesis wants an atomic bomb and must be denied the power to destroy the Jewish state.

Trump, long an opponent of foreign wars, reimposed the so-called maximum pressure campaign on Iran of his first term this month but said he much preferred a deal and described any reports of a US-Israeli strike on Iran as "greatly exaggerated".

Diplomatic room for US-Iran talks for a nuclear deal appeared to narrow in the past week as Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected the idea of negotiations and relatively moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian endorsed the stance.

Israel has publicly broached the idea of an attack in the past.

“Iran today is more exposed than ever to damage to its nuclear facilities," Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in November.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Iran-backed Hamas militants from Gaza, Israel has been locked in a region-wide conflict with Iran and its armed allies.

Escalating a conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon in late September, Israel began to gain the initiative and solidified its advantage with a direct air attack on Iran in retaliation for a missile salvo from the Islamic Republic.

Israel and the United States said those attacks mostly knocked out Iran's anti-aircraft capabilities and left it exposed to any future strikes.

Analysts widely view Iran's fortified and underground nuclear sites as potentially beyond the ability of Israeli bombers to destroy and may require American help or collaboration.

"We will bring them down as we brought down the projects before them," Khalil al-Hayya said during a 46th anniversary commemoration of Iran's Islamic Revolution.

Iran's support for armed groups in the region has been the crux of a 15-month war pitting them and Tehran against Israel, which is armed and supported by Washington.

Trump said on Sunday that he was committed to having US troops take control of Gaza which he hoped to turn into a "riviera of the Middle East". Trump also proposed to relocate at least 1.5 million Palestinians from the strip to other Muslim countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

"The (Oct. 7 2023 attack on Israel) was able to unify the Palestinian people in defense of Gaza against the Zionist enemy's aggression,” al-Hayya added, referring to the shock assault and hostage-taking operation the group undertook which triggered a devastating Israeli incursion into Gaza.

Al-Hayya expressed gratitude to the Islamic Republic for what he called its decades of support for the Palestinian people and Hamas's armed stance, saying he was confident Iran would continue to stand by Palestine and the resistance until they achieve victory together in Jerusalem.

On Saturday, al-Hayya was part of a Hamas delegation which met with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at his Tehran headquarters.

The delegation was led by Mohammad Ismail Darwish, Chairman of Hamas’ Shura Council and included Zaher Jabarin, Hamas’s chief representative in the West Bank. Also present were Mohammad Darwish, head of Hamas' leadership council and senior official Nizar Awadallah.

During the meeting, the delegation provided Khamenei with an assessment of the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, highlighting what they described as Hamas' "victories and successes".

Addressing the Hamas leaders, Khamenei said, “You have not only defeated the Zionist regime but, in reality, you have overcome the United States.”

The meeting took place as Washington reinstated its “maximum pressure” policy on Tehran, with President Donald Trump signaling a willingness to reopen nuclear negotiations.

In a speech on Friday, Khamenei rejected any prospect of talks, stating, "Negotiating with such a government should not be done; it is neither wise, intelligent, nor honorable."

“The Americans sit and redraw the map of the world— but only on paper, as it has no basis in reality,” he added.

Saudi Arabian outlet Al Hadath quoted Lebanese media as saying that the inspections are underway without saying by who.

Lebanese newspaper Lebanon Debate reported on Monday that "similar to what happened previously in the cases of inspection of planes coming from Iran, the same thing happens with flights coming from Iraq, as the flights are subject to a thorough security inspection in order to verify the possibility of them transporting money or assets for the benefit of Hezbollah."

Since the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in Lebanon, the country's army has begun to take a greater role in security affairs.

Last month Israel accused Iran of funneling tens of millions of dollars to Hezbollah through clandestine cash deliveries, lodging formal complaints with the US-led committee overseeing the still fragile ceasefire with Iran's largest regional ally in Lebanon, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Last week US President Donald Trump signed a directive restoring the so-called maximum pressure policy on Iran of his first term, aimed at driving the Islamic Republic's oil exports to zero.

The directive requires the US secretary of state to ensure that Iraq’s financial system is not utilized by Iran for sanctions evasion or circumvention, and that Persian Gulf countries are not used as sanctions evasion transhipment points.

Speaking to the US news channel on Saturday night, Netanyahu spoke of a changing region under the new US President Donald Trump, including a peace deal with Saudi Arabia.

“When we complete the changeover of the Middle East, when we cut the Iranian access down to even further than we've already cut it when we make sure that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, when we destroy Hamas, that will set the stage for an additional agreement with the Saudis and with others,” he said.

Israel normalized relations with some Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates in the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords and the longest-serving Israeli premier hopes to do the same with Saudi Arabia.

As Trump reintroduced his maximum pressure policy on Iran on February 4, the issue of its nuclear program remains of grave concern to the Israeli PM who has long campaigned to have it crushed as Tehran continues uranium enrichment to weapons grade levels.

However, Trump has renewed his call for talks with Iran to reach a deal preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, emphasizing that he prefers negotiations over bombing the country's nuclear facilities.

On Saturday, Trump told The New York Post: “I would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear. I would prefer that to bombing the hell out of it. . . . They don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.”

Iran’s military allies in the region also remain a priority for not only Israel but the US, which has also suffered at the hands of groups such as the Houthi militia in Yemen.

Israel is still in the midst of a fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. However, in the West Bank, Israel believes Iran’s influence only continues to strengthen as Tehran diverts its focus.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Sunday that the armed forces are expanding Operation Iron Wall to include the Nur a-Shams refugee camp.

"We are crushing the terrorist infrastructure in the refugee camps and preventing its return. We will not allow the Iranian axis of evil to establish an eastern terrorist front that would threaten the settlements of Samaria and the seam line and the large population centers in Israel,” he said.

Last month, Katz said the West Bank has become a new focus for Tehran after Israel’s crushing debilitation of Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran is taking advantage of the ruling Palestinian Authority's lack of political legitimacy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to arm militants, the director of a leading research center in Ramallah told Iran International last month.

"We are seeing increasing efforts to promote Palestinian terrorism in Israel through the smuggling of advanced weapons, funding and guidance both on the part of the Iranian axis and on the part of the radical Sunni Islamic axis that is strengthening its grip on the region after the events in Syria,” Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah said.

“Iran exploits this vacuum left by the lack of legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and unpopularity of President Mahmoud Abbas to maintain and sustain this situation," he added.

In a post on Telegram, Handala said the 2.1 terabytes of stolen information also includes legal cases, weapon permits, and identity documents. It also claims to have extracted 350,000 documents and made them publicly accessible.

Israeli police denied the attack, saying there was no evidence of a breach.

"Following inquiries regarding an alleged hack into police systems, we would like to clarify that after a thorough investigation, no external party had access to the police's information systems, and there is no indication that a hack occurred or that information was leaked," they said in a statement on X.

Last month, the same hacking group targeted kindergartens in Israel, disrupting public address (PA) systems and infiltrating emergency systems in at least 20 locations by exploiting vulnerabilities in a private company's infrastructure.

Additionally, the group used another system belonging to the same company to send tens of thousands of threatening text messages to Israeli citizens.

At the time, Israel's National Cyber Directorate confirmed the breach and said it is working with the affected company and the Ministry of Education to address the situation.

Last year in September, the group claimed it had successfully breached the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, alleging the theft of 197 gigabytes of data.

The hackers also published around 30 photos they claimed were taken inside the center, along with screenshots allegedly showing the names of nuclear scientists involved in the facility's particle accelerator project.

In response, the Israeli prime minister's office, speaking on behalf of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, denied the authenticity of the images. "Following a thorough examination, the images and blueprint do not belong to any of its facilities," the statement said.

According to Microsoft, Israel has become the top target of Iranian cyberattacks since the start of the Gaza war, replacing the US as the number one target.

"Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Iran surged its cyber, influence, and cyber-enabled influence operations against Israel," Microsoft said in its recent annual report.

"From October 7, 2023, to July 2024, nearly half of the Iranian operations Microsoft observed targeted Israeli companies," the Microsoft Digital Defense Report said.