Israel accuses Iran of building rocket factories in Iraq

Israel believes Iran is building precision-guided missile factories on Iraqi soil, according to an official source quoted by Yisrael Hayom, adding that it threatens turning Iraq into yet another frontier for conflict with between the two adversaries on top of Syria and Lebanon, they added.

At the same time, the chief of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad launched a furious attack on Iran's regional meddling in a speech given in the Israeli finance ministry in Jerusalem on Monday evening.

Yossi Cohen reiterated that one of Mossad's main goals is to oust Iranians from the wider Middle East, including from near Israel's "northern border", where Iranian-sponsored militias are present in both southern Syria and southern Lebanon.

Israel has annexed the Golan Heights, a strategic territory that legally belongs to Syria, which it now counts as its northern border.

Cohen added that Iran is spreading both its influence and its physical presence in swathes of territory in the Middle East, including Iraq where is it focused on growing its political and military influence. He said that Iran's "dream" is to "consecrate the Shia crescent", through gaining a firm foothold in Iraq which would create a continuous land corridor of Iranian influence, from the Islamic Republic through Iraq, Syria and to Lebanon.

"If we do not combat Iran in the region, we will reach an unmanageable situation where the region is under control of the Iranian military which poses an existential threat to the rest of the world," he said.

Israel is known to routinely issue scathing attacks on Iran's activities in the region, which is sees as an existential threat.

Last month, President Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the UN with a host of maps and diagrams, alleging that Iran was hosting secret atomic warehouses to develop nuclear weapons, in addition to Hizballah positioning three precision missile sites in Beirut.