Israeli KC-135 refueling craft
Four facts deserve attention with regard to a potential attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The first is that the Iranian-Israeli war is already at hand. Iran launched it by sending an unmanned drone into Israeli air space Saturday, Oct. 6, breaking new ground in belligerence with a cyber attack.
Israel countered by stationing Patriot missile interceptor batteries in Haifa and other parts of its northern region.
That Tehran initiated hostilities with a cyber attack on Israel cannot be wiped from the record any more than its score: two points, Iran; zero, Israel, whose air defenses proved no match against a large, slow-moving and cumbersome aerial vehicle loaded with electronic equipment.
As many experts have pointed out, Patriots are not designed for intercepting aircraft, only missiles. Their deployment therefore aims at defending the country from potential Iranian or Hizballah missile strikes from Lebanon or Syria – depending partly on the state of the Syrian war.
And indeed, Hamas and Jihad Islami spokesmen, when they assumed shared responsibility for the 55 Palestinian missiles and mortars fired against Israel Monday morning, Oct. 8, said quite openly that the rules of Gaza warfare had changed: IDF attacks on terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip, however limited in scope, would draw forth reprisals not only from that Palestinian-ruled territory but from Lebanon, they said.
DEBKAfile: As of mid-September, under newly-signed military pacts, the strings of the two leading Palestinian terrorist militias in the Gaza Strip are being manipulated from Beirut by Iran and Hizballah. It is they who now set the rules and dictate the scope of Palestinian anti-Israel operations from Gaza.
The drone’s incursion was a separate Iranian initiative.
The other three points pertinent to the Iranian-Israel confrontation are:
