Israeli officials have been making a concerted effort to downplay the fallout from a unilateral attack on Iran, insisting it would be a brief, quickly forgotten conflict with only a few hundred casualties.
But Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer’s view was less than rosy, cautioning that Israel might quickly face an economic crisis if the attack led to a full scale regional war, something which seems likely if Israel follows through on its threats and starts attacking Iran.
Not that Fischer was warning against launching such attacks. Rather he praised Netanyahu for his “courage” and insisted that Israel’s economy would just have to find a way to deal with the fallout of its aggressive foreign policy. But he made it clear that the war would be “very difficult to deal with.”
Though Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, it does have a fairly large conventional missile program, and since Israel has been threatening Iran for decades plans for significant retaliatory strikes have had plenty of time to be put in place. A war may benefit Israel’s far-right government politically, but it is clear even to them that it would be an economic disaster.
