The Telegraph reports that Iran issued a fiery warning to Israel on Monday threatening to raze Tel Aviv if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed through on his recent threat to act against it. “About Netanyahu’s unwise words, I should say that if they carry out the slightest unwise move against Iran, we will level Tel Aviv to the ground and will not give any opportunity to Netanyahu to flee,” said Mohsen Rezaie, Iran’s Expediency Council Secretary, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. With tensions increasing in the Middle East over Iran’s role in Syria and Yemen and as US President Donald Trump presses for a tougher approach on Tehran, Israel is seeking wider support to contain its regional nemesis.

The Guardian, the Independent, BBC News Online, the Telegraph and the Times report that Turkey has warned Bashar al-Assad’s government that it risks a military confrontation with Turkey if it intervened in an ongoing war in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, escalating of tensions and hinting at the possible widening of an already complex conflict. Reports emerged on Monday that pro-Assad militiamen would enter Afrin to assist local Kurdish militias fighting against an incursion by the Turkish military and Syrian rebels affiliated with Ankara. Details of a Kurdish deal with Assad remain unclear, but Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu threatened action last night if it went ahead. Turkey regards the Kurdish YPG militia as a terrorist organisation and is determined to destroy it. “If the regime is entering Afrin to oust the YPG there is no problem,” Cavusoglu told reporters. “But if the regime is entering to protect the YPG, then no one can stop us, stop Turkey or the Turkish soldiers.” The Daily Mail reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that Syria will face “consequences” if it wades into Turkey’s offensive in Afrin. Erdogan told Putin that Turkey’s military operation in the northern Syrian Kurdish enclave will continue as planned during a phone call between the two leaders.

The Financial Times and the Daily Mail via AFP report that an Israeli energy company has announced a $15bn deal to export natural gas to Egypt, highlighting the deepening strategic ties between the two countries as well as Cairo’s ambitions to become a regional energy hub. In a deal hailed by Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz as the most significant deal with Egypt since the countries’ 1979 peace accord, Israel’s Delek Group said it had signed an agreement to supply 64bn cubic metres of gas over a decade to Dolphinus Holdings, a private Egyptian company. Delek is a partner of the Texas-based Noble Group in developing Israel’s showpiece Tamar and Leviathan offshore gasfields, giant discoveries that promise to bolster the country’s energy security and transform it into a gas exporter. Yossi Abu, Chief Executive of Delek Drilling, said he expected most of the gas involved in Monday’s deal to be used for Egypt’s domestic market, while predicting it could pave the way for wider co-operation.

The Independent, the Times, the Daily Mail via AP report on the ongoing corruption investigation into Netanyahu. Today’s focus is on “Case 4000” and the arrests of two of Netanyahu’s closest aides as part of a new investigation and Shaul Elovitch. He is the main shareholder in Israel’s largest telecoms company, who is suspected of providing the Netanyahu family with favourable coverage on his website in return for preferential government regulation worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nir Hefetz, former Head of Communications at Netanyahu’s office and now the unofficial spokesman for the Netanyahu family, and Shlomo Filber, Director-General of the Communications Ministry, who served as Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff and campaign manager, were arrested on Sunday morning for questioning. The police have made five more arrests the most prominent of which is Elovitch, Chairman and controlling shareholder of Bezeq. He has already been investigated, along with Filber, by the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), which recommended last year that both be charged with fraud and breach of trust. According to the investigators, Filber acted illegally as director-general by intervening in regulatory decisions to benefit Elovitch’s businesses (Bezeq). In addition to the arrested suspects, a number of journalists and media executives have been questioned recently about the nature of the coverage of Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, on the popular Walla website, which is also owned by Elovitch. It is alleged that for a long period favourable articles were displayed prominently and negative reports suppressed. The Prime Minister is also expected to be questioned as is his wife, who the police believe was involved in co-ordinating the favourable coverage. In response, Netanyahu has called a new police investigation into alleged corruption offences a “media witch hunt,” and “another baseless investigation under pressure from the media.”

The Times reports that the Polish embassy in Israel has been defaced with swastikas amid a backlash against Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who claimed that the Holocaust involved “Jewish perpetrators”. The Nazi symbols on the Embassy gates in Tel Aviv were accompanied by profanities and the word “murder”. Morawiecki’s remarks were in response to a question about Poland’s new law which criminalises any suggestion that the Polish state took part in the Holocaust.

The Daily Mail via AP reports that the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank grew at nearly twice the rate of Israel’s overall population last year, a settler leader said Monday, predicting that settlement growth would surge even more in the coming years thanks in part to the Trump presidency. Yaakov Katz founder of the “West Bank Jewish Population Stats,” said that President Donald Trump, backed by a Mideast team dominated by settler supporters, has created a friendly new atmosphere conducive to settlement growth after eight contentious years with the Obama White House. The “West Bank Jewish Population Stats,” report is sponsored by “Bet El Institutions,” a prominent settler organisation that has ties to Trump’s closest Mideast advisers. Katz said the figures are based on official data from the Israeli Interior Ministry not yet available to the public. According to his figures, the West Bank settler population reached 435,159 as of 1 Jan, up 3.4 per cent from 420,899 a year earlier. The settler population has grown 21.4 per cent in the last five years. In comparison, Israel’s total population grew 1.8 per cent to 8.743mn last year, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The Daily Express reports that a threat was issued to Israel by the head of the Lebanese army when he vowed to do whatever it takes to fight aggression from Tel Aviv at a conference on increasing stability in the Middle East. General Joseph Aoun’s furious remarks were made in a speech at the “Support for Stability and Development in the Arab States and the Middle East” regional conference. Aoun said: “I reiterate today our categorical rejection of the Israeli enemy’s sovereignty of Lebanon and its sacred right to invest all its economic resources. And the army will not spare any method available to confront any Israeli aggression, whatever that costs.”

All the Israeli media headline news from “Case 4000” in which several people close to Netanyahu were arrested. The police are investigating whether the controlling shareholder of Bezeq, Shaul Elovitch – who also owns the Walla website – put the website at the disposal of the Netanyahu family in exchange for Bezeq unlawfully receiving benefits worth hundreds of millions of shekels from the government Yediot Ahronot reports that the former Prime Minister’s Spokesperson Nir Hefetz testified about the connection between the Netanyahu family and the Walla news website. Kan Radio reports that Netanyahu and his wife Sara are expected to be questioned.

Maariv reports on a speech given by Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid yesterday at a faction meeting where he talked about the current investigations surrounding Netanyahu: “The Prime Minister cannot accept a million shekels from a billionaire. He cannot conduct the kind of conversations that he conducted with Arnon Mozes. He cannot have that kind of give-and-take relationship with Shaul Elovitch. A relationship that is derived from one thing only—from his peculiar obsession with what is written about him. From the endless preoccupation with what is said about him,” said Lapid. The former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak is also quoted, stating that this was a “time of trial for Kahlon and Bennett. Every day that passes attaches them to the shameful list of spineless opportunists who are stuck to their seat—and I still hope that they are not.”

Maariv also reports the response to comments made by Likud MK Miki Zohar who said that “What is being done to Bibi is like Rabin’s assassination without a bullet.” Zohar blamed “the left wing under the auspices of a large part of the media,” adding that “fear[ed]for Netanyahu’s life, unequivocally. Labor Party sources said in response: “Miki Zohar is a disgrace to the Likud, a disgrace to the Knesset and a disgrace to the country. If there is anything left of statesmanlike values in the Likud, they must renounce his statements and immediately and strongly condemn them.”

Ma’ariv reports what it calls “The big natural gas deal” in which the partners in Israel’s Tamar and Leviathan natural gas fields signed a $15 billion in deals to export natural gas to Egypt over 10 years. The Times of Israel reports that the Lebanese army commander General Joseph Aoun has vowed to “confront any Israeli aggression, whatever that costs. I affirm again our categorical rejection of the Israeli enemy infringing on Lebanon’s sovereignty and its sacred right to exploit all its economic resources”

Kan Radio reports that Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai last night met with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah with Palestinian media outlets reporting that they discussed, among other things, Israel’s initiative to build about 1,000 settlement housing units in the West Bank and to deduct the payments that the PA pays to prisoners who are incarcerated in Israel from the tax money transferred to the PA. The meeting came a few days after Minister of Economy Eli Cohen met with his PA counterpart, Abeer Odeh, in Paris.

The Times of Israel reports on an article in the New York Times that states that up to 20,000 fighters from various militias in Syria have been trained by Iranian military personnel, giving Tehran its “true muscle” in Syria. Ali Alfoneh, a researcher at the US-based Atlantic Council told the New York Times that he had identified 10 Iranian military bases, seven of which are tactical bases and located near active front lines, and three “main” bases overseeing activities throughout the country.