Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will conduct the largest military drill in its history to simulate striking Iran and its nuclear facilities, multiple outlets reported Tuesday.
Amid concerns that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon, the IDF will used a large number of planes to simulate striking targets far from Israel's borders while simultaneously acquiring new targets on various fronts in real-time, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The drill, which IDF said was unique and unprecedented in scope, aims to improve the Israeli military's capabilities in an intense, multifront and prolonged war on all its borders, the Post said.
The Times of Israel reported the drill, part of monthlong exercise called "Chariots of Fire," will take place in Cyprus starting May 29.
The Times reported that the IDF's list of enemy targets had grown by 400% after the implementation of new machine learning and other advanced computing capabilities.
Growing uncertainty regarding a return by Iran to the 2015 nuclear deal has, in part, led to the IDF conducting the drill.
"The price for tackling the Iranian challenge on a global or regional level is higher than it was a year ago and lower than it will be in a year," Israel Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Tuesday, the Times reported.
Gantz added that Iran was just a "few weeks" away from accumulating sufficient fissile material for a bomb and was also working to finish the production and installation of 1,000 advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium, including at a new underground site at the Natanz nuclear facility.
It was reported late last month that talks for a new Iran nuclear deal had stalled over Iran's insistence the Biden administration drop the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that the U.S. was poised to remove five extremist groups, all believed to be defunct, from its list of foreign terrorist organizations, including several that once posed significant threats, killing hundreds if not thousands of people across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi announced early last year that he had instructed the military to devise fresh attack plans against Iran. By September, Kohavi said the army had "greatly accelerated" preparations for action against Iran’s nuclear program.
The Times reported the Israeli Air Force (IAF) would need to find ways to strike Iranian facilities buried deep underground, as well as dealing with increasingly sophisticated Iranian air defenses.
Also, the IAF must prepare for expected retaliation by Iran and its allies throughout the region.
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