Israel Unimpressed by Iran Missile Strikes on ISIS

Israeli officials and media analysts are wholly unimpressed by yesterday’s Iranian medium-range missile strike against an ISIS target, mockingly declaring it a “flop” and insisting that “Hezbollah can do better” with their own limited missile arsenal.

Though the results of the strike are still not totally clear, with a lot of conflicting reports, Israel presented Iran as having fired seven missiles, and only successfully hit the ISIS target once, noting that three of the missiles fell short and landed inside of neighboring Iraq.

While Iran presented the attack as retaliation for ISIS terror in Tehran, Israeli analysts appeared to perceive the attack as being all about Israel, seeing it as Iran “trying to show their capabilities” with the strikes, and having failed to do so.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Iran’s missile system isn’t the most accurate in the world, as it was noted yesterday that this was the first strike they’d carried out in an actual military operation in some 30 years. Iran simply hasn’t had occasion to use missiles offensively at such a range, and has focused their missile program on primarily be a retaliatory deterrent.

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.