Iran, the “‘world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism‘” since 1984, launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1. The fundamentalist Islamic theocracy conducted this massive attack in retaliation for the deaths of anti-Semitic Hezbollah leader and archvillain Hassan Nasrallah along with much of his entire command headquarters in Beirut on September 28.
These Iranian ballistic missiles had a travel time of less than twelve minutes, which meant that approximately 9,402,617 people had to quickly seek protection in bomb shelters throughout Israel. Fortunately, none of these missiles were armed with nuclear warheads.
That is, this time.
Unfortunately, the highly vaunted Iron Dome and David’s Sling along with two U.S. Navy destroyers intercepted slightly less than half of the incoming missiles. More than thirty missiles landed at Nevatim Air Force base in southern Israel while others hit their target at Nof Air Force base south of Tel Aviv (see map) and a few harmlessly landing near Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Benny Gantz, Israel’s Minister of Defense and chairman of the National Unity Party, wrote in a New York Times editorial on October 5 that “Hamas’s leader [Yahya Sinwar] and [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Khamenei share the same ambition: to annihilate Israel [my emphasis].” The New York Post reported on the first year anniversary of the October 7 attack that “a former Israeli interrogator, who spent 180 hours with Sinwar during his time in an Israeli prison [from 1989 to 2011], said Sinwar is an extremist whose true goal is to destroy Israel and kill all Jews [my emphasis].”
Today, the radical Islamo-Nazis governing Iran and their three puppet proxies in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Yemen are truly an existential threat to Israel. Sometime in 2025 Iran optimistically hopes to put nuclear warheads on some of their ballistic missiles in order to cripple or annihilate Israel.
If that were to occur, there would certainly be World War III in the Middle East.
According to “Houston G. Wood, an emeritus professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia [and] a specialist in atomic centrifuges and other nuclear matters, [he has] estimated that it would take Iran up to a year to devise a weapon once it had enough nuclear fuel.” That is not a very long time considering that Iran has threatened to destroy Israel countless times since 1979. This time I think that Iran sincerely means it because it will soon have the nuclear weapons to devastate and exterminate Israel.
Spineless and cognitively impaired Joe Biden unbelievably told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 2 not to strike any nuclear facilities in Iran. Biden, who also claimed the support of the Group of 7, stated that Israel only “should respond in proportion” to Iran’s latest missile attack.
I strongly suspect that Biden’s appalling advice to Israel to “respond in proportion” is because he desperately needs over 100,000 Arab-Americans and Muslims in Michigan and the upper Midwest to vote for Kamala Harris on November 5. Biden’s feeble policy of appeasement and his Neville Chamberlainesque rules of engagement are extremely pathetic.
Despite having received $17.9 billion since October 7, 2023, I do not think that Israel regardless of who is prime minister is going to listen to either Biden or especially Harris when Iran poses an unequivocal existential threat to Israel.
I think that Israel needs to go after the lifeblood of the Iranian economy, which are their oil refineries at Kharg Island and other oil-producing sites. Israel needs to bring Iran economically to its knees, and let the Iranian people overthrow their own despotic leaders where “‘over 60% of the Iranian population is … less than thirty years old.'”
Instead of foolishly striking Iran proportionally, Israel needs to attack them three or four times as hard as Iran attacked them on October 1. This would be in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s more risky advice on October 4 when he stated, “‘Hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later.'” I am afraid that Israel presently may not possess enough bunker-busting bombs to eliminate Iran’s many deeply-buried nuclear research sites.
Israel obviously does not want to see a mushroom cloud hovering over Haifa, Tel Aviv or Dimona. If Iran is allowed to possess nuclear weapons, this would certainly cause a nuclear arms race among Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Israel, and could easily result in World War III, thus producing an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland in the Holy Land lasting for centuries.
I pray to God that this never occurs.
- Robert L. Maronic