Israel’s capability to protect itself against Iranian retaliation doubted

While the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza deflected attention from its publicity campaign about attacking Iran, the landing of Hamas rockets in Israeli cities as far as Tel Aviv has raised serious questions on how the regime would protect itself in case of Iranian retaliatory strikes.

Describing the recent retaliatory rocket attacks against Israel’s largest city and financial hub by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas as “a powerful symbolic message to Israel,” a Thursday report by major US-based news radio station NPR raises major questions about the effectiveness of the regime’s anti-missile defense system, promoted as Iron Dome.

Citing US and Israeli military and political experts, the radio network disputes official estimates by the Tel Aviv regime and Washington that the anti-missile system intercepted over 90 percent of the incoming Hamas rockets, saying that a more reasonable figure for its rate of effectiveness would be between 50 and 75 percent.

Quoting Michael Rubin, a prominent pro-Israeli ‘Middle East analyst’ with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, the report emphasizes that “this rocket contest” may offer insight into a potential Israeli military encounter with the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the Iranians having gained a better idea about the functions and effectiveness of the well-publicized ‘Iron Dome.’

Discounting claims by the Tel Aviv regime “trumpeting its success against Hamas rockets,” the report further cites other experts to underline that “a major part of the Israeli preparation for a war with Iran would be to convince the Israeli people that they will be protected.”

“Especially when it wants to calm its domestic audience, it (the Israeli regime) needs to show that it’s not going to continue to place these population centers under threat and that it’s doing something about it.”

The report concludes by reiterating that Israeli calculations on the extent of the threat posed by such long-range rockets would be critical in determining its “readiness to go to war with Iran,” adding that Iranian defense authorities “are very likely assessing their ability to make Israel pay.”