Iran is increasingly using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in its war with Middle East rivals. The threat is prompting grave concern among senior Israeli defense officials, which they have recently taken to airing in public quite often.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz devoted his speech to the drone menace at a Reichman University security conference Nov. 23, revealing that Iran tried to deliver explosives in February 2018 from Syria to West Bank terrorists using a drone. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also referred to the issue in his September address to the UN General Assembly. “Just this year, Iran made operational a new deadly terror unit, a startup: swarms of killer UAVs armed with lethal weapons that can attack any place any time,” he said. Bennett added that Iran had already carried out drone attacks against Saudi Arabia, US targets in Iraq and civilian ships, and plans “to blanket the skies of the Middle East with this lethal force.”
