Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to punish Iran for a missile strike on Tuesday, when 180 ballistic missiles were fired and sent millions of people across Israel into bomb shelters. Iran said the missile attack was retaliation for the assassinations of two Hezbollah leaders and an Iranian commander.
NJ Spotlight News spoke with Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about the implications of the latest actions and the United States’ role.
“It certainly is different this time around,” Parsi said. “After the Israelis attacked Lebanon, killed Nasrallah as well as a senior Iranian official, on top of around 900 people that were also killed in the same attack that were overwhelming civilians, the Iranians decided to respond. But they did respond in a different way from what they did in April.
“In April, they sent around 300 projectiles, but most of them were slow-flying drones designed to be shot down,” Parsi continued. “They only got nine missiles through Israel’s air defenses. All hitting military sites that they had already signaled before in order to avoid further escalation. This time around, they used hypersonic missiles,” said Parsi.
Parsi pointed to comments made by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for Israel to “finish the job” when it comes to Iran.
“That essentially said that the success of Israel in Lebanon by taking out Nasrallah had shown that Iran was a paper tiger, that Hezbollah was about to be destroyed, and that Israel should go full force,” Parsi said. “And this was an opportunity to transform the Middle East. This is the kind of language that’s got us into Iraq in the first place and has only delivered disaster for the region and for the United States.”
Experts say this was likely the largest single ballistic missile strike in history.
“I think the Iranians drew the conclusion that combined with the fact that the Biden administration has either been unwilling or incapable of stopping Netanyahu that Israel was going to attack Iran unless Iran showed its capabilities and its willingness to strike back,” Parsi said. “And as a result send the message that it will be very costly if Israel declares a full-scale war against Iran.”
Parsi predicted a “direct war between Israel and Iran” and lays some of the blame on the Biden administration.
“The question is will [Israel] target Iranian civilian infrastructure, oil refineries, economic targets,” Parsi said. “If that’s the case, the Iranian response back will be different from what they did this time around, where they only struck military targets. This is an extremely dangerous situation, and frankly, we should not be here.”
“Had the Biden administration forced a ceasefire earlier on, or at a minimum really been serious about preventing an escalation in the region by not allowing Israel to go into Lebanon as it did. . . then we would not be in this situation,” said Parsi.
