The Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, stated on Sunday that the airstrike targeting Iran’s air defense capabilities and missile production facilities was accurate and powerful and had achieved its purpose.
“We promised we would respond to the Iranian attack and on Saturday we struck.
“The attack in Iran was precise and powerful, achieving all of its objectives,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony marking the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7 last year.
Claiming that Iran’s October 1 missile attacks on Israel had failed, Netanyahu said Israeli bombers had hit Iran’s defense capabilities and missile production.
The Jewish nation launched a long-awaited retaliatory strike against Iran in the wee hours of Saturday, almost four weeks after the Islamic Republic’s massive ballistic missile barrage on the country, with the military saying the Israeli Air Force strikes targeted strategic military sites, specifically drone and ballistic missile manufacturing and launch sites, as well as air defense batteries, Times of Israel reported.
Iran government confirmed Israel had targeted military sites around the capital and in other provinces, saying the raids caused “limited damage” but killed four soldiers.
Though, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian said that he will respond to Israel’s attack on his country as a precaution.
Iran had been bracing for a reprisal after its latest direct attack on Israel, in which it fired 200 ballistic missiles that sent most of the population to bomb shelters on October 1, killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, and caused damage in residential areas and at military bases.
The IDF said that the attack had no operational impact.
Saturday’s strikes followed a systematic, months-long campaign to “sever the arms of the Iranian octopus, Hezbollah and Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “Two days ago, we struck the head of the octopus, the Iranian regime.”
Meanwhile, in his first public comments since Israel’s reprisal attacks, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said Tehran officials should determine how best to respond.
“Israel made a mistake [with its attack]. They exaggerated, of course,” Khamnei said.
“To exaggerate about this is a mistake. But deriding this [attack] is also a mistake. To say, ‘nothing happened; it wasn’t important,’ is also a mistake.”
He added, “the incorrect assessment by the Zionist regime must be corrected. They have a mistaken assessment about Iran.”
According to the state IRNA news outlet, Khamenei also said Israel “should understand the strength, will, and initiative of the Iranian nation.”
He added that Tehran’s “response would be determined by senior officials, in a way that best serves the interest of the people and also takes the the state into account.”
Israel’s airstrikes on Saturday crippled Tehran’s ability to produce long-range ballistic missiles, in a blow that will be hard and time-consuming to recover from, and rendered crucial energy facilities vulnerable to future attacks by destroying air defense batteries protecting them, according to multiple reports citing Israeli, American and Iranian officials, as well as satellite images analyzed by experts.
