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2 months ago
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Israel is bracing itself for another Iranian attack after a crescendo of threatening rhetoric from leaders in Iran warning that the country would retaliate for an Israeli missile strikes last month.
Iran initially played down the impact of the 26 October Israeli strikes on its military facilities, which were in turn a response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel at the beginning of October.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an initially ambivalent verdict on the Israeli strikes, saying that the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed” while Tehran weighed a response.
On Saturday, however, Khamenei delivered a clear threat. He said: “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response”.
Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, the supreme leader’s chief of staff, vowed on Thursday that an Iranian response was certain and that it would be “fierce and tooth-breaking”.
On the same day, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said the Iranian response “will surpass all expectations”.
“Israel believed it could change the regional balance of power by launching a few missiles,” Salami said. “You have once again proven that you do not understand the Iranian people, and your calculations are completely wrong.”
The Wall Street Journal on Sunday quoted Iranian and Arab officials briefed on Tehran’s plans as saying the looming Iranian strikes would be more complex, involving more weapons and more powerful warheads than the 1 October attack, and the new barrage would come between Tuesday’s US elections and the inauguration of the next US president in January.
According to some reports, Israeli intelligence believes the next Iranian attack could be launched from Iraq, where Iran has close allies among the Shia militias, who are armed with Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles. The flight time from Iraq would be substantially shorter than from Iranian territory, from where the missiles were launched towards Israel on 1 October.
The previous Iranian missile attack was in turn a response to the Israeli airstrike that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on 27 September, setting off the current cycle of escalation.
Israeli commanders have reportedly warned that any new Iranian attacks would be met with a rapid response, and that Iran would have little protection, as many air defence batteries were damaged in the 26 October Israeli strikes.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said at a graduation ceremony for Israeli officers on Thursday: “Regarding Iran, we struck its soft underbelly.” He added: “The haughty words of the Iranian regime’s leaders cannot cover up the fact that in Iran today, Israel has greater freedom of action than ever before. We can go anywhere that we need to in Iran.”
The US has vowed to help defend Israel against any Iranian attack and last month deployed an anti-ballistic missile defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in Israel with nearly 100 American troops to operate it.
Six US B-52 bombers arrived in the Middle East over the weekend, most likely in Qatar, after the deployment of a squadron of F-16 fighters and refuelling tankers in the region in October. The movements, the Pentagon said, were “in keeping with our commitments to the protection of US citizens and forces in the Middle East, the defence of Israel, and de-escalation through deterrence and diplomacy.”
Raz Zimmt, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said that Iranian leaders initially wanted to play down the significance of the Israeli strike last month but “when they realised its impact and the significance, certainly the most significant [strike on Iran] since the Iran-Iraq war, they reached a conclusion they can’t leave it without any kind of retaliation.”
Zimmt said the Tehran leadership faced a dilemma: failing to respond would be interpreted as weakness, at home and abroad, but a new attack on Israel could further fuel escalation at a time when Iran is vulnerable.
He said: “It might be very risky for them … It’s very obvious that Israel, in case of an Iranian retaliation, will probably move forward to the next stage of attacks on Iran which could certainly involve not just military targets, but also symbols of the Iranian regime, oil installations and then also nuclear facilities.”
In Netanyahu’s remarks to graduating officers last week, he made clear that the Iranian nuclear programme was the ultimate Israeli target.
The Israeli prime minister said: “The supreme objective that I have set for the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the security services is to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons … We have not taken – and we will not take – our eyes off this objective. Obviously, I cannot detail our plans to achieve this supreme goal.”
