Will Israel need to defend itself against Iranian missiles? The David’s Sling missile defense system. Photo courtesy of the IDF.
Iran’s missile capabilities have been making headlines, especially after they fired multiple missiles into Syria to strike terrorists in that country and as the United States has repeatedly condemned new Iranian missile tests as threatening. Turns out Iran isn’t just testing missiles, they’re stockpiling them too—and so many they are running out of room to store them.
“The rate of our missile production is so high that we are faced with the problem of space,” PressTV reported Brigadier General Hossein Salami as telling state television last weekend. Salami, the second-in-command of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), also warned the United States that a military confrontation with Iran would result in Israel’s “destruction.” He was quoted by PressTV as saying, “A war in the Persian Gulf would be a fluid one that would move far beyond the imagination of the Americans and engage all the areas bearing their interests; it would be drawn toward the Zionist regime and its destruction.”
And Salami isn’t the only one threatening Israel—apparently that missile strike on Syria was meant as a warning to Israel too.
The Fars News Agency reported Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh pointed to the June attack on terrorists outside Iranian borders as a message to Israel. “Both the Zionists and the reactionary regional regimes understood that we have certain redlines and will resist to safeguard the revolution and will not withdraw,” said Hajizadeh.
In the midst of the missile threat, Iran is also being accused of violating the intent of the international nuclear deal signed in 2015. “We believe that Iran is in default of the spirit of the agreement,” said United States spokesperson Heather Nauert in comments last week published by the State Department. “The agreement calls for—to contribute to international peace and security. We believe that the deal has not contributed to that kind of international peace and security.”
The U.S. aren’t the only ones seeing the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as failing.
Israeli analyst Dr. Emily Landau, head of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at The Institute for National Security Studies, recently argued via Twitter that the nuclear crisis with North Korea is a roadmap of where the conflict with Iran is currently heading. Warned Dr. Landau in her Tweet, “If distorted&misleading narrative of ‘JCPOA is working’ not scrapped, Iran will be same. Wake up.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, August 14, 2017)