Israeli Security Official: Iran Couldn’t Do Much If We Attack Them

Says Iran Could at Best Launch a Few Missiles Back

Current Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz insists that there is no reason for Israel to get a “green light” from the US before attacking Iran, because Iran poses such a trivial threat to the nation that it could barely retaliate at all.

“I think Iran’s possibilities to retaliate are very limited,” Steinitz insisted, adding “I suppose there would be a response of two or three days of missile fire, perhaps even on Israel, on American bases in the Gulf. But I don’t think it would be more than that – very limited damage.”

Israeli officials have regularly tried to downplay the risk of retaliation as a way of arguing that attacking Iran wouldn’t be a very big deal, and isn’t something worth serious public debate.

At the same time, arguing that Iran is so weak and such a non-threat that it can’t even theoretically retaliate makes Israel’s attempts to portray them as a threat to the entire planet even more nonsensical than it already was.

Iran has, of course, a considerable arsenal of missiles with a range capable of hitting Israel, and has spent much of its military budget on the idea of having retaliatory capability against oft-threatened Israeli attacks. Though it is impossible to say what Iran’s response would be if it was randomly attacked, the capability is clearly to launch more than just a couple of days of strikes.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.