Iranian news portal Nournews, a mouthpiece of the ayatollah regime in Tehran, reported on Monday that an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine secretly entered the Red Sea last Wednesday, August 4, through the Suez Canal.
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Reports on the movements and whereabouts of Israeli submarines are typically uncommon.
According to Nournews, two Israeli Navy destroyers also crossed the Suez Canal at the same time, most likely as escorts for the submarine.
The Iranian news site interpreted the alleged naval deployment as being part of Israel's threat to respond militarily to Tehran's belligerence in the Persian Gulf, and claimed that the purpose of the move was to raise tensions in the region as a means of swaying public opinion in the US against a nuclear deal with the Islamic republic.
Nournews quoted the former chief of the IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, who said last week that Israel should not act militarily against Iran in the Persian Gulf, where the Islamic republic holds an advantage, and should rather let the United States and Great Britain take the lead in that arena.
In the situation that has unfolded, the report said, "It seems that the new prime minister of the Zionist regime [Naftali Bennett], by intensifying his hasty and stupid actions, is getting more and more caught in a trap, the exit of which will certainly have very heavy costs for him and the inhabitants of the occupied territories."
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