Israel seems ready to respond in a much more forceful and public way with Iran after Tehran launched its second massive missile attack on Israel this year, analysts and officials say.
After Israel invaded Lebanon to confront Iran’s strongest ally, Hezbollah, and Iran’s second massive missile attack on Israel in less than six months, Israel seems ready to strike Iran directly, in a much more forceful and public way than it ever has, and Iran has warned of massive retaliation if it does.
“We are in a different story right now,” said Yoel Guzansky, a former senior security official who oversaw Iran strategy on Israel’s National Security Council. “We have a consensus in Israel — among the military, the defense experts, analysts and politicians — that Israel should respond in force to Iran’s attack.”
To many Israelis, there is now little to lose: Iran’s efforts to strike the urban sprawl around Tel Aviv crossed a threshold that Tehran has never previously breached, even during its earlier missile attack in April, which targeted air bases but not civilian areas.
The USA us probably confident, Israel just needs it as a existential threat.
Stuxnet and their targeted assassinations of Iran’s scientists seem to have made their efforts unfeasible for the foreseeable future. They have the enrichment cylinders, but they can’t keep both the infrastructure and research safe from constant attacks, which makes progress very difficult since it is very expensive both materially and in knowledge. They likely can’t break past 20% enrichment which is useless for a bomb.
For reference the technology was supposedly smuggled/provided by Pakistan, and they did it covertly in about 6-9 years, which also apparently upset Mossad because they thought Pakistan would get involved in the middle east.