Gallant: Iran's attack was aggressive, our response will be a deadly surprise

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday said that the IDF’s counter-strike on Iran for its October 1 massive strike on Israel will put the original attack to shame.

He said, “The Iranian attack was aggressive but inaccurate. In contrast, our attack will be deadly, pinpoint accurate, and most importantly, surprising – they will not know what happened or how it happened. They will just see the results.”

Speaking to IDF Intelligence Unit 9900, the defense minister said that much of Israel’s air supremacy in the Middle East is due to their intelligence collection work.

He noted the unit’s efforts against Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and any other necessary front to help the Air Force see “very precisely and in every place what we want to.”

Will Israel retaliate?

On Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israel is not expected to attack Iran’s nuclear program but rather to focus on various kinds of military bases and intelligence sites, following a New York Times report on the issue.

MISSILES FIRED from Iran are intercepted over northern Israel, last Tuesday. This has been a grueling year marked by unrelenting challenges. Just this past week, Israel faced an attack of nearly 200 ballistic missiles from Iran, the writer notes. (credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)

Confronted with the New York Times report, sources did not deny the thrust of the report, which predicted that Israel’s retaliation against Iran for its massive October 1 strike on the Jewish state would fall more in the medium range of attack scenarios.

Further, the Post understands that Israel’s attack on Iran – which virtually all top Israeli officials have publicly promised – will still be much more substantial than its narrower retaliation on April 19, when Iran’s S-300 anti-aircraft missile system was damaged.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have both presented removing the Iranian nuclear threat from hovering over Jerusalem’s neck as one of the most significant purposes of their lives and time in public service.

If those officials and other members of the defense establishment have backed off from such an option in favor of attacking Iranian military and intelligence bases, such as possibly ballistic missile facilities, drone facilities, and commanders who coordinated the strikes on Israel, it would mark a dramatic shift toward directly emphasizing Gaza and Lebanon as more significant security issues than Iran.