IDF chief: If Iran attacks Israel again, we’ll hit ‘places we spared this time’
Halevi says air force held back during retaliatory strikes as ‘we may be required to do it again,’ adds that ‘we didn’t finish this event, we are right in the middle of it’
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Tuesday warned Iran not to pursue further attacks against Israel following targeted Israeli strikes on Iranian military targets over the weekend, which were themselves a response to a massive ballistic missile attack launched by Tehran on October 1.
Speaking to aircrews at the Ramon Air Base in southern Israel, Halevi said that if Iran “makes the mistake and launches another barrage of missiles at Israel, we will once again know how to reach Iran.”
Should Iran again attack, Halevi warned, Israel would “reach Iran, with capabilities that we did not even use this time, and hit extremely hard both the capabilities and the places that we spared this time.”
He said the reason Israel held back when it struck Iranian missile factories and other sites on Saturday was because “we may be required to do it again.”
“We didn’t finish this event, we are right in the middle of it,” he added.
Iran has attempted to downplay the damage caused by the attacks, and on Sunday, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that it “should neither be exaggerated nor minimized.”
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami similarly claimed that Israel had “failed to achieve its ominous goals” but nevertheless said that the “bitter consequences will be unimaginable” for Israel.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghei warned that Tehran would use “all available tools” to respond.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iranian military facilities came weeks after the October 1 attack, in which Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms, causing relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas, and killing a Palestinian man in the West Bank.
The Iranian attack came days after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime Hezbollah leader. Iran said the missiles were also a response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran in July widely attributed to Israel.
In an hourslong operation early Saturday morning, dozens of Israeli aircraft targeted strategic military sites across Iran — specifically drone and ballistic missile manufacturing and launch sites, as well as air defense batteries — with explosions reported in the Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Shiraz areas.
A series of satellite images analyzed by the Associated Press on Tuesday also found that Israel likely struck a base run by the Revolutionary Guards for ballistic missile construction in Shahroud, although the Israel Defense Forces did not identify it as a targeted location.
Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.
