 "Top US officials said that most of the missiles launched by Iran failed to reach the targets. Source: Reuters")
As the world continues to navigate through the ongoing Iran-Israel tensions, reports are emerging that roughly 50 per cent of Iranian missiles either failed to launch or crashed before reaching Israel during the late Saturday attack.
While giving an update on the attack, three US officials told The Wall Street Journal that Iran’s attack using its ballistic missiles can not be considered a success because most of them failed to reach Israeli territory.
The US officials noted that Iran has launched around 115 and 130 ballistic missiles that were intended to target Israel. The officials mentioned while half of those ballistic missiles were intercepted successfully, the other half “failed in the flight” and did not reach their targets.
“So much for the vaunted ballistic missile capability of Iran,” one of the officials exclaimed.
Israel incurs relatively low damage
Shortly after the attack, the Israeli Defence Force Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that Iran fired 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles towards Israel.
Hagari mentioned that out of the hundreds of launches only “few” crossed into Israel and caused “minor damages” at the Navatim Airbase. The airbase suffered minor damage to its infrastructure located near the runway.
While no one died in the attack, a spokesperson for Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service confirmed that a 7-year-old girl was injured by shrapnel from a missile inception.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIsrael remains divided over retaliation
In light of the attack, the Israeli war cabinet on Sunday conducted deliberation for over three hours but did not reach a unanimous decision over how the country would respond to the Iranian attack.
An official source from the Israeli prime minister’s office said that while the cabinet is certain that “there will be a response”, they are waiting for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to “present options”.
The source also told the Israeli news outlet that the cabinet unanimously favours a retaliation against Iran but continues to remain divided over the timing and scale of any such response.
World hopes for de-escalation
Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration is also facing significant international pressure with world leaders urging the authorities to de-escalate the matter.
US President Joe Biden and senior members of his national security team sought to contain the risk of a wider regional war and told their Israeli counterpart that the United States would not participate in any offensive action against Iran.
In a conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister on Saturday, Biden insisted that further Israeli response was “unnecessary”, CNN reported. The POTUS insisted that Israelis should consider the Saturday incident a win because Iran’s attacks had been largely unsuccessful and demonstrated Israel’s superior military capability.
However, during phone calls with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz maintained that the Jewish nation will continue defending its citizens.
I emphasized: Israel, like any other country, is committed to defend its citizens,” said Katz in a post on X.
“I told them — it’s your time to weaken the Iranian regime, to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization, and to impose crippling sanctions on the Iranian missile project. Iran must pay a price,” he added.