Has Israel bitten off more than it can chew in its confrontation with Iran? Is that why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Florida to try to rope President Donald Trump into joining him in another war against Iran?
Ali Shamkani, the former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, vowed an X yesterday that any aggression against Iran “will face an immediate #Harsh_Response beyond its planners’ imagination.” Ali Akbar Velayati, Secretary-General of the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening and a former Iranian foreign minister, argued in a statement today on the sixth anniversary of the assassination of IRGC Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, that Israel and the U.S. since not only did Iranian missiles–36 of them by Israel’s admission–penetrate Israeli air defenses but the societal and institutional collapse that Israeli war planners were expecting would result from Israel’s decapitation strikes at they beginning of the 12-day war did not happen.
Iranian statements such as those from Shamkani and Velayati might generally be dismissed as bluster but experts consulted by The Times of Israel argued that Israel may be on the wrong side of the missile defense equation should a second war break out. While the experts assess that Iran is successfully rebuilding its ballistic missile stockpiles and repairing the damage it suffered in June, the same cannot be said for the missile defense capability of Israel, particularly the U.S. component of it that was provided by a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) ant-missile battery.
ToI cites reports that emerged after the war that the THAAD fired 100-150 interceptor missiles during the 12 days significantly depleting the U.S. stockpile of missiles that cost an estimated $12.7 million each. “The pace of producing THAAD interceptors in Lockheed Martin is less than 20 a year—and that’s Lockheed Martin,” Tal Inbar, a veteran expert in aviation policy, space, and missile issues told ToI. Pentagon procurement plans currently call for the purchase of just 37 THAAD interceptors in 2026. At that rate, it would take 2-4 years to replace the missiles that were fired in defense of Israel in 12 days.
A related factor is that unlike in June, Israel would not have the advantage of surprise, meaning that Iran could likely respond more quickly with larger, sustained barrages of missiles. According to Inbar, Iran launching 100 missiles a day over the span of a few days would be “a challenge to intercept.” While Israel’s arsenal includes locally made systems able to complement the THAAD, it would still struggle to deal with repeated large salvos.
The difficulty, according to Inbar, lies in the inherent limits of any missile defense system (at least one based on using missiles to kill missiles -ed.) when faced with sustained, high-volume attacks designed to tax both interceptor inventories and response capacity. “Nobody can intercept all of the incoming missiles… There is no 100% missile defense [system], but… it will cause more obstacles to defend a country when you have a large quantity of incoming missiles,” he said.
