Al Duwairi: Attack Shows Strong Iran, Israel’s Intelligence Failure

Military expert Major-General Fayez Al-Duwairi said the latest Iranian attack reflects a new intelligence failure for Israel, stressing it was different from its True Promise attack that took place last April, and reflects seriousness in its response.

The recent attack was carried out from several areas in Iran which reflects good preparation, especially since each batch of the trajectories headed towards specific targets. He noted the missiles used were hypersonic, which reflects Tehran’s seriousness in its response, Al-Duwairi said on Al Jazeera.

The military expert stressed the call by Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari for people to leave the underground shelters a few minutes before the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced the launch of another wave of missiles represents a major intelligence failure on the part of Israel.

Al-Duwairi added this latest attack reflects great coordination for Iran, adding the great silence that preceded the launch is a credit to Tehran as it was different from the attack last April.

Although the results of the strike and its losses are not yet known, Al-Duwairi said the at least 250 missiles cannot but cause losses.

Possibilities of others entering

Israel said it will respond to this attack regardless of the repercussions, while Iran’s UN mission warned any Israeli response to this attack will be met with a devastating response.

The strategic expert pointed out Iran is still committed not to strike any US military bases in Middle East region, and that the Ain al-Assad base was targeted by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. He said this puts us in a state of great confusion.

He said this latest attack on Israel will lead to the erosion of the strategic gains Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps boasting about and in saying he will change the shape of the Middle East.

He pointed out Iran has already sent a clear message that any counterattack to this one will be met with a devastating response, indicating Israel may be subjected to strikes from the Houthi Ansar Allah group in Yemen and from the Lebanese Hezbollah.

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Missiles, Sirens and Underground Shelters

CROSSFIREARABIA – Despite their heinous war on Lebanon, Israelis today are gripped with fear and psychological problems in a cyclone of fear dominated by incoming missiles, drones and blasting sirens all over northern and central Israel.

The Israeli psyche is particularly acute these days because of the insistence of Prime Minister’s Netanyahu extension of the Gaza war to Lebanon.

Saturday was particularly eerie for the Israelis because of the never-ending sirens that started in Tel Aviv in the afternoon warning of an incoming ballistic missile all the way from Yemen.

Although the Israeli media told us the missile – appropriately named Palestine 2 – was shot down by Israel’s Iron dome, no doubt bringing down with it lots of shrapnel, it created much panic among ordinary Israelis.

The social media video clips showed it all. People dropped whatever they were doing and hurried down to the underground shelters with the blasting sirens ready to give anyone a heart attack.  

The video clips showed a city in different positions. First of all, it was empty, hardly any traffic on the roads, you can say a ghost town, just tall buildings with risk noise in the background.

Then there is a video clip of people on road pavements amidst cars, hurrying, running and then steadying their pace to beat the others to get to the underground shelters. But there is a sense of anxiousness to get to the door of the shelter whether they have to go steadily down.

On this occasion, there was no news of injuries, but on previous rocket attack sirens in the city, there were reports of injuries, people trampled upon to reach the shelters in what appeared as tight doors.

And then there was the Ben Gurion Airport on the outskirts of the city. People were taking no chances this time. Just the previous day sirens blasted all over the city warning of a missile attack from the Houthis of Yemen, all 2000-kilometers away.

Just like this one, the previous missile struck just six kilometers from the Ben Gurion Airport. In the latest video-clip, people were seen running towards the end of the wide corridor at the sound of “horrible” noise with a man on the loudspeaker in Hebrew, no doubt telling people to hurry down to the shelters.

For Israelis, this war, although on the periphery of their lives, has become an absolute nightmare!

Outside, there was more noise coming from the beach filled with swimmers and sunbathers. At the sound of the sirens they dropped everything and began scurrying to the nearest shelter.

Meanwhile, there was another video clip of the plane carrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after making his speech to the almost-empty UN General Assembly, because of the mass walkout.

Just as he entered Israeli airspace an F-35 phantom appeared to escort the plane to the airport. This was due to two reasons, the killing of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, the previous day and which he ordered and the fact that incoming missiles and drones were coming in from Lebanon in a deadly war he insists on continuing.    

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Domination Space For Common Space

By Dr Khairi Janbek

When we think of contemporary Iran, one always believes that the Arab Middle East had always been dominated by the three Non-Arab American allies; Iran under of the Shah, Turkey and Israel.

One thinks that those “neighborhood police stations’ were the guarantors of stability through their convergence, and at times contradictions, in the age of Cold War and oil. However, the Shah of Iran was deposed and the Anti-communist Cold War ended, but that didn’t mean that oil stopped becoming important nor that Russia and China were no longer threats.

One would say, that the rehabilitation of Iran and possibly turning it into a negotiations partner aims at keeping the third angle of the police stations triangle going, because non of the Arab countries, no matter how much they tried, could never replace Iran, because no Arab police station is permitted to emerge as a third angle.

Having said that, it would be beyond naive to think that the expansion of Iran’s power and influence happened by stealth or escaped the notice of the US and NATO.

After after all Iran grew to become a Red Sea country through its influence on the Houthis in Yemen, a Mediterranean country through its influence in Syria as well Lebanon through Hezbullah and the major Gulf country through its supporters in Iraq. 

In fact this Iranian domination of space is what has created a common space between all its long-arm organisations in the region.

Essentially, if we compare Iran to an octopus, all those various groups are its tentacles, and they all serve the purpose of Iran’s strategic interests, albeit not through a push-button approach, but through not taking any action which would not please their Persian master.  

Of course, this puts Iran in a strong position to be a major player in the region and an inescapable negotiations partner for the US, which is also convenient for the Americans, in order to remind their Arab allies who is their protector in a region policed by Turkey, Israel and Iran.

Of course this takes us to the point of saying that, for all intents and purposes, for the Americans a trusted adversary is more important than distrusted friends, and that it would be absurd to think that all those long arms of Iran in the Arab world can be amputated by military means; they certainly can be weakened, but without the consent of Iran and without the right price, so long as it remains behind them, nothing much can change.

At this point, from what one can only see, is that no one in their right mind or otherwise, will permit a war to emerge in which Israel is pitted against Iran and the US as well as NATO putting all their weight behind Israel and forcing the Arabs to choose their camp.  

That would be the scenario of the end of the world as we know it, or with major civil wars in the Arab countries controlled by the tentacles of Iran, and which no one wants.

Dr Khairi Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in ParisFrance

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Sirens Blast in Tel Aviv as Yemeni Missile Hovers Over City  

Air raid sirens blasted in Tel Aviv, early Friday morning as explosions were heard in the city with the Israeli army stated the sirens were triggered by a missile launched from Yemen with an interceptor missile that also launched to counteract it.

“The Arrow air defense system successfully intercepted the missile launched from Yemen, and air raid sirens and explosions were heard after the missile was intercepted and shrapnel fell,” the Israeli army stated.

Israeli Channel 12 reported that 17 Israelis were injured while fleeing to shelters after the sirens were activated in Tel Aviv.

The leader of the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said on Thursday the battle is one and that “the aggression against the Lebanese people is within the framework of the aggression against the Palestinian people.”

On 15 September Houthi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree, spoke of the carrying out of a qualitative military operation that targeted a military target in Jaffa, Israel, with a hypersonic missile.

“The missile succeeded in reaching its target, and the enemy’s defenses failed to intercept and confront it, and it traveled a distance of 2,040 kilometers within 11 and a half minutes,” he said.

For its part, the Israeli army said at the time that the initial investigation revealed that the missile launched by the Houthis at Israel crashed in the air.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the “Houthis” should “know that they will pay a heavy price for every attempt to harm us.”

Nine Israelis were injured while fleeing upon hearing the sirens of a missile attack on Tel Aviv that lies in central Israel.

Since dawn last Monday, Israeli forces have been launching waves of intensive airstrikes in an operation called “Arrow of the North”, targeting areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, which are considered strongholds of Hezbollah, leaving more than 600 dead and thousands wounded, with the death the toll is expected to rise.

In contrast, sirens continue to sound in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, after Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at military sites and settlements.

Since 8 October, 2023, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, most notably Hezbollah, have been exchanging daily shelling with the Israeli army across the “Blue Line” separating the country, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, most of them on the Lebanese side.

These factions demand an end to the war that Israel has waged on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, which has left more than 137,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and deadly famine according to Russia Today.

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Yossi Hadar: ‘Netanyahu Lost The War to Hamas’

Israeli political analyst Yossi Hadar, in the Jewish Maariv newspaper, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost the war to Hamas, and instead of signing a prisoner exchange deal with it, he is trying to drag Israel into a war of attrition that will keep him in power.

The analyst harshly criticized Netanyahu for trying to dismiss Defense Minister Yoav Galant, describing it as a political move to preserve his position, ignoring the military failures in the Hamas attack of 7 October, 2023.

The writer began his article by referring to the operation attributed to Israel of blowing up the wireless devices in Lebanon and Syria, which resulted in the death of 32 Lebanese and the wounding of hundreds, according to the latest statistics.

“If the attribution of this operation to Israel is correct, it reveals another aspect of Israel’s enormous military capabilities, but at the same time it could bring us closer to a real war with Hezbollah, while the war in Gaza continues, the Houthis attacks on Israel, and Iranian threats continue, with operations growing in the West Bank and inside Israel,” he added.

The analyst accused Netanyahu of deliberately prolonging the war for political reasons, ignoring the serious security implications for Israel, and described him as the most failed prime minister in Israel, and that he “is leading an approach of political baseness and exhaustion and implementing a Machiavellian plot aimed at tightening control over the country by pushing the public to despair.”

Hadar stressed that Netanyahu’s escalation in the north is “the way Netanyahu seeks to maintain his rule, not in order to do something beneficial for the citizens of Israel, but only for his personal and political interests, just so he can continue to exhaust us.”

Political Maneuver

The writer then went on to assert that Netanyahu’s attempt to dismiss Galant is part of a political maneuver aimed at strengthening his power, rather than addressing the military failures that were evident in the 7 October attack, which puts Israel in a weak position in the face of the growing threats.

“All this does not prevent Netanyahu from hatching a plot to overthrow the defense minister at this critical moment for the security of the state, and in the midst of a war that could expand,” he said.

He explained Netanyahu’s move as a bid to replace his defense minister because of his opposition to the Haredi conscription law that the Orthodox parties insist on, in exchange for appointing the head of the Right-wing Israel Party, Gideon Sa’ar, because the latter will pass this law, referring to Sa’ar’s volatility, who was previously quoted as saying, “If you want Netanyahu as prime minister, don’t vote for me.”

Hadar also denied Netanyahu’s followers’ marketing of the reason for Galant’s dismissal as a “weak leftist,” saying that Galant himself offered, just four days after the 7 October attack, to attack Hezbollah as a preemptive move, but Netanyahu refused, in a state of panic over the events.

The writer recalled that Netanyahu is the one who divided Israel by leading “an attempted coup against the judicial system that he created before 7 October,” and he is the one who brought upon Israel “the catastrophe of 7 October,” and now he is dragging another catastrophe by dragging Israel into a war of attrition.

He said, “Instead of waging a short and intense war, he chose a dangerous and failed war of attrition that goes against all strategic logic, and dragged Israel into the worst state it has been since its founding, because what matters is only the logic of political survival,” according to Jordan24.

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