A war against Iran and Hezbollah will see Israel pounded by over a thousand rockets per day, causing never-before-seen images in the Jewish State, an unnamed former senior officer from the Israeli Air Force told The Jerusalem Post.
“It’s a severe threat to the homeland, and there will be images that have never ever been seen in the past,” he said.
According to the anonymous source, if the population remains in shelters, the main damage will be to infrastructure that will be targeted by the barrages of dumb rockets and missiles fired toward Israel.
While the thousands of missiles are a real threat, it’s not an existential threat like the precision missiles that Hezbollah is trying to obtain.
“It’s a severe threat, but people tend to think in extremes,” he said. “Israel will not be [at] zero at the end of the conflict. We have to put it in perspective – people think Tel Aviv will be leveled. Iran and Hezbollah can create damage, and for sure there will [be] strikes in many locations and the damage will probably be greater than in the past, but we have to put it in perspective.
“All of us should be prepared for the day after, which will be different in terms of what we see, but the State of Israel won’t be gone. We have to protect life and strategic sites and that can be done. Infrastructure can be rebuilt.”
Despite crippling sanctions, Iran has the largest missile force in the Middle East, with a substantial inventory of close-range ballistic missiles (CRBMs), short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), and medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) that can strike targets throughout the region as far as 2,000 km. from Iran’s borders.
According to the former senior IAF officer, the lack of a government in Israel may be opening a window of opportunity for the country’s adversaries to take advantage of the situation.
“Not having a government has a lot of effects, some of which are obvious and some that are not,” he said. “What do our adversaries think [of] our situation? Will they try to take advantage and do something?”
While the officer stressed that all of Israel’s foes are not interested in initiating a full-scale war or conflict, Iran and Hezbollah remain the major threats, followed by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
ACCORDING TO THE senior officer who left the military in 2017 after a lengthy career in the Air Force, Israel is already in a direct confrontation with Iran through it’s ‘war-between-wars’ campaign in Syria.
“There are rules clearly stated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said. “Iranian targets have been struck and destroyed, and in every case, what Israel has done is a direct conflict, but both sides are trying to keep it in a box to handle it. It might escalate, that’s for sure. Both sides don’t want an escalation. But we cannot accept their threatening presence in Syria. This campaign will continue.”
While there are several restraining factors on Tehran such as the Russian presence in Syria and the unrest in Lebanon and Iraq, the American departure from the Middle East has given the Iranians “a lot of opportunities on which they will move forward very slowly and gradually.”
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