Nearly two months after the start of the ceasefire, sirens sounded again across northern Israel in response to Iranian missile strikes, reports The Jerusalem Post. This is the first time that Iran has targeted the Jewish state since the start of the truce established on April 8.
Tehran warned on Sunday June 7 that its shots on Israel were a “warning†in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the southern suburbs of Beirut, warning that any further aggression would be met with “stronger response†.
But the Israeli response was not long in coming. Explosions rang out in Tehran and the cities of Tabriz and Isfahan, state television said early Monday, as the IDF claimed its air force had bombed “military targets belonging to the Iranian terrorist regime in western and central Iran†.
According to Ha’Aretz, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, clarified a little later that Israel was targeting “now Iranian surface-to-surface missile launch sites as well as infrastructure not related to the energy sector†. “Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel today. Each of these missiles can level an entire neighborhood and kill hundreds of people. No self-respecting country would tolerate such an attack, and neither would Israel… justified Leiter.
The risk of an “escalation” with Iran
According to the site Axios, the American president, Donald Trump, who spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, just after the Iranian shots, nevertheless asked him not to retaliate. The tenant of the White House had demanded that Israel “leaves more time for diplomacy†, the United States being “close to reaching an agreement†with Tehran, specifies the media, which cites a senior American official and an Israeli source close to the matter. “We think the president has bought himself some time […]. I don’t think an Israeli strike is imminent… declared the American source.
Trump’s demand to “don’t fight back†confronte Nétanyahou à un “terrible dilemma†, analyzed, just before the Israeli response, David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of Times of Israel. “He could effectively submit to presidential diktat and refrain from attacking, which would further destroy Israel’s deterrence capacity against a triumphant and taunting Tehran, giving [l'État hébreu] an image of weakness [au reste] of the region and seriously undermining its fundamental independence… underlined the journalist. Or Netanyahu “could challenge the American president, at the risk of having to engage in what could almost certainly turn into an escalation with Iran, against which Israel would find itself well isolated…
In an interview given to Financial Times and published on Sunday, the American president told the British daily that Netanyahu “will have no other choice†than to accept any agreement that the United States obtains during negotiations with Iran. “It’s me who decides. I’m the one who makes all the decisions. It’s not him… Trump said of the Israeli prime minister.
