Israel thwarted Iran missile attack but defense isn’t enough

The Iranian missile attack on Israel failed in all its major objectives. Remarkably, no Israelis were killed or injured – thanks to Israel’s air defenses and its extensive system of shelters, plus help from US Navy ships in the Mediterranean.

There are two problems ahead. The first is that Iran has hundreds of ballistic missiles. It launched 180 on October 1, compared with 120 last April. Iran’s aim is to saturate Israel’s air defenses, which it partly managed to do this time.

The second problem is that at some point Iran will be able to mount nuclear warheads on its missiles. This creates an existential problem for Israel.

Israel cannot reasonably rely only on air defenses, no matter how good they are. It has to go after the enemy’s ability to muster hundreds of ballistic missiles. This means that one of Israel’s main security interests is to destroy launch capabilities and hit manufacturing sites for the missiles. Israel’s other imperative is to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, something that former President Trump immediately grasped.

As it is, Israel was largely successful fending off the latest attack. One Palestinian man was killed in Jericho on the West Bank, hit by part of a missile body from a shot-down rocket. (The Palestinian Authority does not have a civil defense system. Nor does Hamas in Gaza, aside from tunnels for its army.)

Iran made many claims and published fake images to demonstrate how it defeated Israel. But even Russian mil-bloggers such as Rybar recognized Iran’s propaganda and denounced it. Rybar wrote:

That night

Israel has a layered and partially integrated air defense system. It is linked to US air defenses and relies on an Israeli long-range radar, Green Pine (EL/M 2080), and a US