Israel has prevented dozens of major terror attacks planned by ISIS in Europe, including attacks involving civilian airplanes, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told NATO member state ambassadors to Israel on Tuesday.
Talking about the ISIS threat to Europe, Netanyahu told the ambassadors, “We have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries.
“Some of these could have been mass attacks of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they would have involved civil aviation. Israel has prevented them, and thereby helped save many European lives.”
Netanyahu added that Europe and NATO are also benefiting from Israel’s efforts to prevent the establishment of what he called “ISIS West” in the Sinai Peninsula.
“As ISIS is … being destroyed in Iraq and Syria, it is trying to establish an alternate territorial base in the Sinai. Israel is contributing to preventing that in myriad ways, and in general I would say that Israel is the most powerful indigenous force in the Middle East that fights radical Islam.”
Sunni radicalism, however, is not the only Islamic threat facing Europe, Netanyahu continued. Shi’ite Iran, he said, seeks worldwide domination for its brand of Islamic militancy through the acquisition of nuclear weapons and by establishing a “territorial empire from Tehran to Tartus in the Mediterranean, enveloping the Middle East also from the south through Yemen, eventually conquering the Middle East.”
“We are absolutely committed to preventing Iran from forming such a base, a military base in Syria, and we back our words with action,” Netanyahu told the ambassadors before warning them that if Iran were to achieve its goals that would also threaten Europe as it would lead to a new wave of refugees flooding the continent.
“If Iran realizes its goal of bringing in 100,000 Shi’ite fighters into Iran… you’ll have the son of ISIS and the grandson of Al-Qaeda that will be fighting [for] this new Shi’ite force. Where will the spillover happen? In Europe. Where will the human flow go? To Europe,” Netanyahu said.
“Who’s preventing that right now? Israel. Right now, Israel alone,” he added.