Air defences activated in Tehran to intercept new Israeli attacks, IRNA says
Air defences in Iran’s capital Tehran have been activated to intercept new Israeli strikes, state media IRNA reported a day after Israel initiated a number of attacks on Iran’s nuclear programme and military command.
Netanyahu says ‘more is on the way’
In a video address to the Iranian people, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says the objective of attacks on Iran, which he labelled Operation Rising Lion, was to “thwart the Islamic regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile threat”.
He claimed that in the past 24 hours, Israeli forces have eliminated “top military commanders, senior nuclear scientists, the Islamic regime’s most significant enrichment facility, and a large portion of its ballistic missile arsenal”.
“More is on the way. The regime does not know what hit them, or what will hit them,” he posted on X.
Threat from Iran is part of Israel’s ‘foundational narrative’
Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg, who is currently in a shelter in Tel Aviv, tells Al Jazeera that even though hundreds of missiles have been launched at Israel, the impact on Israeli civilians will be much less than that felt by Iranians from Israel’s attacks.
He said there is a consensus within Israeli society that Israel’s attack on Iran is justified and the threat from Iran is “part of the foundational narrative” of Israel.
Goldberg said that his opinion is that Israel’s attack on Iran is “pointless” and is being used to distract the world from what is happening in Gaza.
Israeli attacks could push Iran to pursue nuclear weapon
Jim Walsh, a US-based nuclear expert, says he expects back-and-forth firings between Israel and Iran over the next few days.
But the most important thing, he explained, will be if the Iranian authorities decide to pursue a nuclear weapon in response to Israel’s attacks on the country. “For 20 years, they’ve refused to cross that line,” Walsh told Al Jazeera.
“I think there’s strong scholarly evidence – and certainly, if you look at the politics of the moment – to believe that in this attack, Israel will get the exact opposite of what it wanted, which is Iran is going to decide to go for the bomb.”
Walsh said that would spell disaster not just for the Middle East, but for the world.
“What is it that Iran can do? It doesn’t have an air force. It doesn’t have Hezbollah and Syria to launch missiles. It cannot invade … and so all it really has is missiles, and a decision to be able to pursue nuclear weapons – having been forced into this position by the [Israeli] attack,” he said.
That “is just bad news all around, for the region and globally”.
Israel ‘bombing Iranian moderation’
Israel has been dictating, manipulating, deceiving its population about various threats, especially the “Iranian threat”, for as long as I can remember.
Since Netanyahu became deputy foreign minister in the early 1990s, he has been putting Iran on the top of the agenda, sometimes as a deflecting mechanism, but mostly as an existential threat against Israel.
So that has planted a seed of hatred and fear, and disgust among Israelis against the Iranian regime. And hence, when such a [military] campaign is launched, it certainly will have popular appeal in Israel.
The problem with all of this is that there had been – there was and still is – a diplomatic alternative to all of that. There was a nuclear deal.
Just in the last couple of years, the Iranians elected a leader who is so pragmatic, he wanted to sit down with the Americans to cut a deal and lift the sanctions and normalise relations with various countries in the region.
What Israel is doing now is not just simply bombing the Iranian nuclear programme, it’s bombing Iranian moderation.
It's exactly what Netanyahu wants, perpetual war so he can stay in power.
