In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, Israel’s newly appointed defense minister, Israel Katz, congratulated him in a social media post, writing that, together, the United States and Israel will “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance, bring back the hostages, and stand firm to defeat the axis of evil led by Iran.”
Within the Israeli establishment, Katz has also been one of the most prominent voices promoting the claim that Iran is smuggling weapons through Jordan to Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups in the occupied West Bank. “Iranian Revolutionary Guard units are collaborating with Hamas operatives in Lebanon to smuggle weapons and funds into Jordan with the aim of destabilizing the regime. From Jordan, these weapons are then smuggled across the eastern border, flooding Judea and Samaria, particularly refugee camps, with dangerous weapons and large sums of money,” he posted on Twitter in early August. Just over two weeks later, he repeated the claim, writing that “special units” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “smuggle weapons into the Kingdom of Jordan, mainly through the Syrian border, attempting to destabilize the regime and turn the Israel-Jordan border from a peaceful one into a volatile front.”….more