Senior officials from Israel's intelligence community and defense establishment gathered Thursday morning for the opening of the "economic battle" conference hosted by the Defense Ministry's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing.
Speaking at the conference, Defense Minister Israel Katz explained why he believes the economic campaign against Iran has reached a critical stage.
"For decades, the regime in Tehran has built a regional terror machine based on the continuous flow of resources to its proxies across the Middle East," Katz said. "Instead of investing the country's resources in improving the lives of Iran's citizens, developing the economy, infrastructure, education, and healthcare, the Iranian regime chose to invest in terrorism."
Katz stressed, "Every dollar that enters the Ayatollahs' treasury is a dollar that becomes a ballistic missile in Iran, a drone in Lebanon, a rocket in Gaza, or a UAV in Yemen. And every dollar that reaches Iran is a dollar that may find its way to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and the rest of its terrorist proxies. Therefore, the economic campaign against Iran is one of the most important battlefronts for the State of Israel's security. We must not be satisfied with what we have achieved so far and must intensify the financial pressure on every front," he added.
Katz also described space as Israel's greatest strategic force multiplier against adversaries with larger resources and greater strategic depth, announcing that he has instructed the IDF to develop unprecedented offensive space capabilities.
"Space is the place where the territory you hold on the ground has no significance, where the size of your population has no significance, and where many other factors do not matter, and that is the goal we have set. Not only to operate in space, not only to be capable of defending what we place there and neutralizing what others place there - but also to operate from space downward: through the disruption of systems, which will happen relatively soon, and also through kinetic strikes."
"We are now recruiting the best minds. Today, no country possesses the capability to strike from space, and we must become the world's leading nation in this field. If we achieve that, it will ensure us an enormous advantage in deterrence, offensive capabilities, destruction, and everything else when confronting enemies with great resources," Katz concluded.