Israeli Security in the Wake of the Hamas Attack: Secretary of State Daniel Biden’s Call for a Strong Security War and Israel’s Support for Israel
In the past six months, Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip and done a ground invasion that has left most of the territory in ruins.
The strike and retaliation represent an escalation that many officials worldwide had expressed worry about ever since the outbreak of war between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, the day Hamas led an attack on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead.
“President Biden has been clear: our support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. The US will support the people of Israel in their fight against Iran.
The world is seeing this now more than ever because Iran is a terrorist state according to Israel’s defense minister. “We are determined to defend our citizens against this terrorism, and we know how to respond to it.”
By Saturday, as anticipation had grown over a possible retaliation, Israeli officials warned residents living in communities near Gaza and the Lebanon border to limit the size of gatherings and to work indoors or within reach of a shelter. Schools across Israel were closed through Monday.
The launch comes four days after Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation for an April 1 strike on an Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Iran said the strike had killed seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two generals, and it blamed Israel for the attack.
The launch was confirmed by the White House, where a spokesperson said President Biden would monitor the attack from the Situation Room alongside top defense and diplomatic officials.
Israel is Ready for Any Scenario: Defenses, Militia, Drones and Air Defenses in the Context of the Middle East
We have decided that whoever harms us, we will harm them. We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination,” Netanyahu said.
In a Saturday night address to Israelis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was ready for “any scenario, both defensively and offensively.”
In a statement broadcast on Iranian state television, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had launched dozens of drones and missiles against targets in Israel.
The drones would take hours to arrive in Israeli airspace, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said. He warned Israelis to stay in safe rooms for 10 minutes if sirens in their areas go off.
Jeffrey Lewis, a member of the international security advisory board, said in a posting that Iran has land- attack cruise missiles that could carry a ton of explosives.
Iran has largely focused on deterrence, long range missiles, drones and air defenses in recent decades. It has one of the largest ballistic missile and drone arsenals across the Middle East, according to weapons experts, and is also becoming a major arms exporter globally.
Previously, Israel had faced aerial attacks from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose rocket arsenal includes short-range (12 to 25 miles) and somewhat inaccurate 122-milimeter rockets of the Grad family, as well as Syrian-made M-302 rockets with a range of about 100 miles. Hamas also has Fajr-5 rockets from Iran and a similar, locally made version of the Fajr-5, both with a range of about 50 miles.
According to his post, different versions of that missile have also been provided to the Houthis in Yemen and to the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces.
How Far Can the UAS Be? The Counterattack on Israel in Light of the October 7 Attack at the Iron Dome, Vacuum
As I write this, Israel’s cabinet is debating that question. As a matter of self-defense, Israel has every moral and legal right to respond in kind — and then some. Over the weekend, Israel demonstrated its ability for defense, but not enough. It must also re-establish its capacity for deterrence. It needs to show the Iranian leadership that their war with Israel will be a high price, and that they won’t have to repeat it again.
The United States military has confirmed that it has shot down some Iranian drones and will continue to do so. The UK has said it will provide backup for US planes that have been diverted from their existing missions, and that it will intercept UAVs as well.
“Because there’s so much indication of warning in advance of the UAS, presumably there’s going to be a lot of fixed-wing, manned aircraft that are looking at these things, tracking these things, and presumably trying to engage these things,” says Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy think tank.
The slowness and fixed flight path means the UAS have to travel for several hours before being able to reach their destination.
At one level, they are easy to take down. They’re not stealthy, they don’t fly very fast, and they don’t maneuver,” says David Ochmanek, senior defense analyst at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. “In some way they’re like airborne targets.”
Things get harder if the drones are flying so low that the radar can’t detect them The biggest challenge, though, may be sheer quantity. It is possible for the Iron Dome to get overwhelmed as it did on October 7, when Hamas bombarded Israel with missiles, as well as it has hundreds of missiles at its disposal.
Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National security Initiatives at the University of Colorado, says the process was designed for defense against low-flying, fast moving missiles. Which also makes it extremely well-prepared for an onslaught of drones. The drones are going to fly slower than the rockets, so it is an easier threat to address.
There are at least 10 missile-defense batteries strategically distributed around the country in the Iron Dome. When a threat is detected, radar sends that information back to a command-and- control center, which will track the threat and see if it’s a real danger or a false alarm. The system then fires interceptor missiles at the incoming rockets that seem most likely to hit an inhabited area.